Sing Her Down

A Novel

By: Ivy Pochoda

Narrated by: Frankie Corzo, Kimberly M. Wetherell, Sophie Amoss, Victoria Villarreal

Long-listed, NPR Best Book of the Year, 2023

L.A. Times Book Prize—Finalist, 2023

This program features multicast narration.

“I read everything Ivy Pochoda writes. Her capture of the complexities, diversities, and insanities of today’s life and culture is next to none. I loved Sing Her Down. The world will too.”—Michael Connelly, author of Desert Star

No Country for Old Men meets Killing Eve in this gritty, feminist Western thriller from the award-winning author of These Women.

Florence "Florida" Baum is not the hapless innocent she claims to be when she arrives at the Arizona women's prison—or so her ex-cellmate, Diosmary Sandoval, keeps insinuating.

Dios knows the truth about Florida's crimes, understands the truth that Florence hides even from herself: that she wasn't a victim of circumstance, an unlucky bystander misled by a bad man. Dios knows that darkness lives in women too, despite the world's refusal to see it. And she is determined to open Florida's eyes and unleash her true self.

When an unexpected reprieve gives both women their freedom, Dios's fixation on Florida turns into a dangerous obsession, and a deadly cat-and-mouse chase ensues from Arizona to the desolate streets of Los Angeles.

With blistering, incisive prose, the award-winning author Ivy Pochoda delivers a razor-sharp Western. Gripping and immersive, Sing Her Down is a spellbinding thriller setting two indelible women on a path to certain destruction and an epic, stunning showdown.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

©2022 Ivy Pochoda (P)2022 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

“Sing Her Down is that rare novel that explodes your expectations from the very first page and goes on doing so until the end. Ivy Pochoda finds these characters at the root of their pain and desire. The prose is flayed and taut, the iconic episodes just keep stacking up, and the entirety has the epic intensity of a murder ballad.”—Jonathan Lethem, author of The Arrest

“Urgent, haunting, and fearless, Ivy Pochoda’s Sing Her Down has the grit and guile of Rachel Kushner, but with a ferocious empathy all Pochoda’s own. Pochoda proves herself a singular portraitist of Los Angeles, and Sing Her Down is her most ambitious and accomplished novel yet.”—Megan Abbott, author of The Turnout

“Sing Her Down is an incantation, a hallucination, a fiery odyssey of women taking back the power stolen and leached from body and mind, while their souls got harder and harder—like diamonds. Ivy Pochoda's women inhabit a world everyone should walk into with them, a universe everyone should know.”—Susan Straight, author of Mecca

Nothing New or Unusual

Too disjointed to hold my interest. The jump between reality, spirits, and consciousness got a bit haywire.

criminal women on the run, wreaking havoc

character development was good. Some women got to close chapters that they desperately needed to

Scenes come alive

It was a little and to go between narrators of the story (reader did a great job). the 1st scene felt long but after getting through that 1st section it was a great story! hard to turn it off! suspense, not too predictable and the authors descriptions allow the reader to really feel/smell/see the scene.

What the ….

What is the point of this book? Women can be violent. It reads like a modern treatment of a 1950 women in prison picture. Nothing about it rings true

Narrators voice was intolerable.

Gave up after first bit. Just couldn't listen to the narrator faking a "tough" female voice any longer

Terribly disjointed; shallow characters; a poor attempt at neo noir!

There isn’t one aspect of this “work” that is memorable in a positive sense. Move on!!

Repetitive

Prefer a book with more story and action; less exposition. It was easy to space out while listening due to the repetitive nature of the writing.