It’s the morning after Valentine’s Day in 1976 when Gloria Ramirez manages to knock on Mary Rose Whitehead’s front door. This moment, face-to-face with fourteen-year-old Gloria will change the course of Mary Rose’s life forever.

In Valentine, the debut novel from Elizabeth Wetmore, Odessa, Texas is a vast wasteland of oil booms come and gone and soon to return. The story at the center of the novel focuses on the rape of Gloria Ramirez and the ripples it makes among the women of the small town. On Valentine’s Day Gloria made the fateful decision to hop into the truck of Dale Strickland, a charming roughneck hot off the oil field. The next morning Gloria is clinging to life and manages to escape the sleeping Strickland by walking barefoot across the barren landscape and gripping the barbed-wire fence for balance.

The book begins with Gloria’s perspective of her brutal attack and subsequent escape and then shifts to the perspectives of several Odessa women and girls. Each chapter reads like a short story, revealing slowly how each woman is connected to Gloria’s assault. Mary Rose was the first person to see Gloria after her escape and is a witness in the trial of Dale Strickland. Corrine Shepherd and her late husband were the last people to see Gloria before she got into Strickland’s truck. Karla and Evelyn are women who work at the bar where Corrine drinks and Dale Strickland visits, alone.

Shifting perspectives between women echo the violence and oppression Gloria endured and that women of the region have endured for generations. An oil boom in a small town in the mid-twentieth century meant an increase in the number of men. Some moved with their families. Some arrived alone. But their presence never went unfelt by the women.

Another element of Wetmore’s novel is the racial tensions between the Mexican and Mexican-American oil field workers and their white counterparts. Because Gloria is Mexican-American, her attack is dismissed by many of Odessa’s residents due to their bigotry. Wetmore makes a concerted effort to not only demonstrate the racial tensions between the white and Mexican-American residents of Odessa, but she also adds in the historical background on the tensions between the Texas Rangers and the Mexicans that once called Texas home. This illuminates the reach of racial tensions and violence that spans generations for the white and Mexican-American residents in the region.

Historically, the predominant voice of western fiction has been male. The majority of their storylines silenced the experiences of women and their daughters in the region who often arrived alongside their husbands and fathers. Wetmore’s novel does what many female authors have since taken upon themselves and given voice to the experiences of women from these regions. Female isolation and silent rage are an on-going theme in this tale.

Wetmore achieves an artful balance between violence, bitter humor, and history, making Valentine a highly recommended read.