Beta Vulgaris announces the arrival of a singular talent: Margie Sarsfield's debut novel will burrow into your very soul. I couldn't put it down.--Nick White, author of How To Survive a Summer

Uncanny and electric and quietly harrowing. . . . Margie Sarsfield dazzles us and challenges us, delivering a novel so vivid and memorable, I'll be thinking of beet pilers for years to come.--Danya Kukafka, author of Notes on an Execution

Sharp and atmospheric eco-horror that slices into the gruesome strangeness of industrialized agriculture. With Maggie Sarsfield's compelling cast and heady, urgent prose, Beta Vulgaris is a fever dream hungry to consume you.--Kathryn Harlan, author of Fruiting Bodies

[An] ambitious and delightfully bizarre debut...This is a knockout.--Publishers Weekly, starred review

I'm trying to create a niche for myself as the preeminent weird-girl-book guy. To cement my legacy, I'm recommending Beta Vulgaris, a very weird book that I'm very excited for! When a young woman and her boyfriend start working a seasonal job at a sugar beet farm, she wants to make enough money to pay her rent for a few months. What she gets is a string of mysterious disappearances and a pile of beets that seems to be talking to her. Thank you Margie Sarsfield for your contribution to the "vegetable gothic" canon.--McKayla Coyle "Literary Hub"

Named for the humble beet plant and meaning, in a rough translation from the Latin, "vulgar second," Sarsfield's surreal debut finds a seasonal harvest worker watching her boyfriend and other colleagues vanish amid "the menacing but enticing siren song of the beets."--John H. Maher "The Millions"

[An] ambitious, impressive debut... [Elise's] depth and honesty give this story a lot of power.--Gabino Iglesias "New York Times"

Whispering beets and inner surrealism illuminate a haunting exploration of agricultural exploitation, eating disorders, and the terrifying fulfillment of desire.--Meghan Racklin "Bomb Magazine"

Beta Vulgaris is disturbing [and] beautiful in its insistence on that old saw, "Nothing human is alien." Sarsfield gives us privileged access to a heart that is hurting.--Chris Hewitt "Minneapolis Star Tribune"

A promising and well-written quasi-speculative story.-- "Kirkus Reviews"

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Pub date: 2025-02-11

Length: 296 pages