For fans of Rachel Kushner and Gillian Flynn, a gritty contemporary debut novel that puts Katniss Everdeen into Euphoria.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Mattea Kramer’s The Untended, which is out May 6th 2025.
Casch Abbey is a waitress, single mom, and recreational boxer who falls in love twice: first with a veteran who secretly grows pot on a rich man’s land in Vermont’s Green Mountains, and then with a painkiller that eases her long-buried pain.
After her foot is crushed under the wheel of a station wagon, Casch loses her waitressing gig and goes broke—and the meds for her foot are her only source of relief. But when the drug is recalled due to outcries of widespread addiction, Casch’s dependence imperils her already tenuous life, as cravings lead her into her small town’s simmering netherworld.
Intimate and exhilarating, The Untended will upend your every assumption about who is a hero and who is worthy of love.
Stranger at the Door
The woman who stood on Casch’s front step was younger than Casch had pictured, with short hair and a stud in her nose.
“Social worker,” she said, all friendly and chatty, “Department of Children and Families, we spoke on the phone?”
She stared expectantly at Casch, whose pulse knocked in her throat. This is my home visit? You can’t come in my house right now—my house is a disaster.
She hadn’t realized they would come unannounced. She’d told them about her broken foot, and over the phone the woman had sounded genuinely sympathetic. Casch had thought there’d be an appointment, that she’d have some warning. Gabi had told her to clean up the house really nice.
Could she say no? Could she say not right now, come back another time? What do they do if you say no?
“Can I come in?” said the woman, smiling as she hugged the papers to her chest.
“Uh, sure,” said Casch, glancing over her shoulder, stepping aside. And the social worker was in her home.
“I was so sorry to hear about your foot,” she said, looking down at the plastic boot as she entered. “Has it been healing up okay?”
Casch pulled the door closed and stared at her own living room—crusty dishes on the coffee table, crumbs across the carpet, a mound of laundry in the chair. One of her stretched-out bras had fallen from the pile onto the floor.
“Why are you here?” she said, turning to the woman.
“This is a Chapter 49 assessment,” she replied, like it was so obvious.
“What does that mean?”
She cleared her throat. “Concern about potential neglect.”
Casch felt herself freeze. The woman kept talking.
“My only priority is the child,” she continued, “and the purpose of the home visit is just to ask a few questions, look around the domicile, see the child in his home environment. Then I’ll be on my way.”
They thought she was neglecting her children. Her throat was dry as she tried to swallow. They thought she was a person who would neglect children. Her face burned. They thought she didn’t understand that having Molly and Dean was the best thing she’d ever done.
The woman kept chatting while Casch’s eyes darted and caught on all the things she would find wrong. She would report it all, the kids’ dirty home.
“So why don’t we get started? I’ll ask some questions, you’ll show me around, I’ll meet Dean when he gets home—he is coming home on the bus, I assume?”
Casch nodded.
There were so many questions, Casch gaping as the woman asked one after another. Some of them were easy: What grade is Dean in? What is his teacher’s name? Like she was being tested on her own child. But some of them were hard to answer. How do you meet Dean’s daily needs? How do you handle difficult situations?
The woman asked to see his room.
“They share,” said Casch, mouth dry, as the woman went poking around the sloppy bedroom. The floor was covered in clothes, there was a tear in the window screen. On each twin bed the sheets were tangled, Molly’s checkered comforter wedged up against the wall. Beside her bed was an old Chips Ahoy! box that she was planning to use for a bird house.
“Do you think Dean has enough age-appropriate clothing?” said the woman.
“Age-appropriate,” said Casch.
“I know they grow so quick,” she said, nodding her head like it was an offer of kindness.
“He does have enough. Yes.”
The woman insisted on coming out to the curb to watch her get the kids off the bus, and Casch’s face seared with embarrassment.
“Who are you?” said Molly after she hopped to the curb. Dean took Casch’s hand.
“Does anyone else live here?” the woman asked when they were back inside, glancing at her papers, “It’s the three of you—or is there someone else living here too?”
“No, it’s the three of us,” said Casch firmly.
The woman asked to speak with each child individually. Casch waited at the kitchen table, leaning, trying to hear any of it. But it was so quiet, the woman’s voice soft and each kid hardly saying a word.
“All set,” the woman said cheerfully when that was done. “I’ll just have a look at the kitchen, then I’ll be on my way.”
Casch watched her examine the dishes piled in the sink beneath the dark brown cupboard doors that drooped crooked on their hinges. The only sound was the hum of the old refrigerator that was the color of American cheese. By the back door, Casch saw the woman note the kitty-litter box and the overflowing trash—she’d known it needed to be taken out, but it was a hassle with her foot. The dumpster was on the other side of the parking lot.
“Do you mind if I have a look in the refrigerator?”
Casch stared at her. Please leave, she didn’t say.
The woman looked at her expectantly.
“Okay. Sure.”
Pulling open the fridge, the woman bent down and peered inside, then jotted something on her paper.
“Okay,” she said, standing up, “I’m all set.”
When the front door clicked behind her, Casch’s head was pounding, her foot throbbing.
“Why was she here?” said Molly, standing in their bedroom doorway, arms folded over her chest.
“I don’t know,” said Casch. Was it her fault?
“I’m going outside,” Molly said, taking the elastic off her wrist and holding it in her teeth as she used both hands to put her wavy brown hair into a ponytail.
“Me too,” said Dean, squeezing past his sister.
Casch nodded and limped into her room. The meds for her foot were on the nightstand. She took two and then stood staring at the bed.
Finally she turned and went through the kitchen and out the back door. Molly was just down the sloped lawn, her spiral notebook open in one hand. Dean was gathering sticks at the edge of the forested embankment that buffered the apartments from the highway. Gently Casch lowered herself to the grass, which felt pleasantly cool through the seat of her leggings. She lay backward and cradled her head with one hand.
Soon the kids drifted over and sat beside her. They listened to the muffled whoosh of cars, and a bird calling. The call echoed.
She would never think of coming out here if not for the kids. Like the sweltering day last August, when they’d asked her if they could walk up the river. Casch had taken them swimming that day—but not to the sandy beach, which was the town rec area; you had to pay to park there. She had taken them farther north, to the old pumping station. She’d pulled over by the covered bridge where there were only a couple other cars, and the three of them went scrambling down the dirt path in their rubber sandals. Most of the river was only about ankle deep, but here you could swim. Molly dove around rapturously in the cold pools while Casch and Dean held off in the shallow part, blue floaties on his arms, Casch’s cotton shorts and T-shirt soaked and cleaving to her skin. She’d been so concerned about whether the kids’ swimsuits still fit them that she hadn’t even realized, till they were practically out the door, that her own suit was so old it had disintegrated. But who cares? She swam in her clothes. It was after the three of them had waded out of the clear water, back to the pebbled shore, that Molly looked up the riverbed and said,
“What’s up there, Mom?”
“What do you mean?” Casch had replied.
“If you follow the river where does it go?”
“I, uh. Don’t know.”
“Let’s try it.”
“What?”
“Let’s go there, let’s walk up the river.”
“Yeah, Mom!” said Dean. “Let’s walk up the river!”
Casch peered upstream to the place where it bent gently and disappeared in the greenery. Why not? she had thought. Why not walk up the river and see where it goes?
They had left their towels in the grass on the bank, their sandals and Dean’s floaties in a sandy pile, and started walking.
And as soon as they were around the first bend, it seemed they had traveled somewhere else. Ordinary Greenfield, baked in the August sun, shut behind them. This new place was cool and dark under a forest canopy. The kids fell quiet as they studied unfamiliar surroundings, and the only noise, besides the splash of their own feet, was the river itself, moving over the rocks.
They walked for a long time looking at the crowds of ferns, and on one side, a muddy flat where skunk cabbage grew. At a moment when they were all peering up toward the next bend, a little bird came diving from a tree into the water in front of them. They startled back. Then, just as quickly, the thing emerged and fluttered up into the tree branches.
“Mom, what was that!”
“What was that?” said Casch. They all looked at one another, charmed.
The river world had seemed so private, so completely theirs, that Casch was surprised when they came out to a sunny curve and there was a family having a cookout. Dad was tall, wearing Bermuda shorts, holding a spatula over a charcoal grill. The wife, standing with a little girl, wore a ruby swimsuit. A bigger girl played in the water. They’d set up lawn chairs, there was an explosion of beach toys. The smell of cooking meat hit her nose and Casch realized she was hungry.
The parents had waved a polite hello. Casch herded the kids onward—such a perfect family, you know what they thought looking at her. And soon they were past.
They came to a dark pool, and as the kids bent over to look, two frogs leapt from the rocks into the water. Molly reached in and caught one in her fist, like it was the easiest thing.
“Look,” she said, opening her hand, and the thing jumped away.
They stayed by that pool because Dean wanted to get one too. By the time he’d caught his own and showed it proudly in his hands—it sliced immediately back into the water—Casch saw that his teeth were chattering.
“Dean, you’re freezing,” she said, and now she noticed his lips turning bluish.
“No, I’m not.”
“Baby, you’re shivering.”
“No.”
“It’s time to turn around,” she said, taking his hand, and this time he didn’t protest.
But when they started back, the riverbed seemed less forgiving than before. Casch’s feet were raw against the slick rocks, and Dean slipped around and held tight to her hand. Though she had been grateful for the shade when they’d set out, now Casch felt a chill under her wet shirt. She glanced at Molly, who was no longer looking for birds but just plodding ahead, staring at her own feet.
They came to the other family and Casch wanted to hurry by. But the pretty mother had looked at Dean and frowned. “Does he need a towel?” she’d asked.
“We have towels back this way,” said Casch. “Thanks, though.”
“No, please, take one. Look, we have a whole stack.”
And the woman had unfolded a striped beach towel, luxuriously thick, and walked out into the water to wrap it around Dean’s shoulders.
“You keep it, we have a million,” she said.
It was a while still before they rounded the last bend—Casch couldn’t believe how far they’d gone—and saw the covered bridge up ahead. Her van, its rusted wheel wells covered in duct tape, was the only car. At once both kids said how hungry they were. Of course they’d been hungry all along, but they had not complained. The three of them grabbed their things and hustled up the path. It felt good to climb in the hot airless car, and they went zooming home for food.
They had not gone swimming again after that. The kids started school; August turned to September. But they still had that coral-and-white striped towel in the pile in the bathroom, making all the other towels seem crummy and thin.
Out in the backyard now, there was a tapping sound.
“What’s that?” said Molly, lifting her head from the grass. She sat up. The sound came again, like a drumroll. Casch watched her daughter peer into the trees.
“There,” Molly whispered. “There, Mom, look.”
She pointed but at first Casch didn’t see. Then her eye caught the splotch of red and the black and white stripes of the bird in the tree.
“I see it,” said Casch softly.
“Where?” said Dean.
“Right there, baby,” she said, pointing. Molly lay back down. For a minute the three of them listened to the bird hammering its beak into the tree.
“Does it live here, Mom?” said Molly.
“I—don’t know.”
“I think it does, I think it lives here.” Molly sat up again and reached for her notebook.
“What are you doing?” Casch asked, rolling her head to look.
“Adding it to my map.”
