My Heart Is a Chainsaw

by Stephen Graham Jones · 2021

When the quiet lake town of Proofrock, Idaho, begins to attract wealthy tourists and developers, half‑Native teen Jade Daniels feels the world closing in like a slasher film. With an abusive father, an absent mother, and a town that shuns her, Jade survives by cataloguing horror movies, using their rules to predict the violence that soon erupts on the shores of Indian Lake. As bodies surface and the community’s gentrification spirals into chaos, Jade’s encyclopedic knowledge becomes both weapon and salvation, turning a classic murder mystery into a fierce critique of colonialism, Indigenous displacement, and the commodification of rural America. Stephen Graham Jones delivers a razor‑sharp, genre‑bending tale that thrills like Friday the 13th while haunting like Shirley Jackson, making "My Heart Is a Chainsaw" a fresh, terrifying homage to horror and a powerful, unforgettable coming‑of‑age story.