Sundress Reads: Review of We Arrive Uninvited

Jen Knox’s We Arrive Uninvited (Steel Toe Books, 2023) is a captivating exploration of intergenerational trauma as seen through the perspectives of a family with mystical powers. The novel alternates between the viewpoints of Emerson, the youngest granddaughter, and her grandmother, Amelia, weaving together the stories of multiple generations of women. This structure reveals the complex dynamics of a family haunted by both psychological and supernatural forces. By examining the intricacies of legacy, mental illness, and healing, Knox offers a thought-provoking narrative that challenges conventional views on mental health.

Amelia’s backstory, including her relationship with her own mother Kat—a woman pressured into motherhood and disconnected from the family’s “magic”—offers a layered view of how generational trauma manifests. The story begins with the unexpected suicide of Emerson’s mother, Celine. As Emerson navigates her grief, she fixates on a prediction Amelia made the day Celine died, claiming to have foreseen her death and attempting a ritual to prevent it. Five years later, Emerson seeks answers by attempting to re-forge her relationship with Amelia, who is now estranged and institutionalized in an elder psychiatric facility, The Lavender House. Amelia, diagnosed with schizophrenia due to her behavior, continues to claim possessing magical qualities, and seeks to teach Emerson about the traditions passed down through the women in their family so that Emerson can tap into her full potential. 

With parallel narratives, Knox paints a vivid portrait of a family grappling with intergenerational trauma plagued by mental health stigma, misogyny, and the burden of their mystical gifts. Emerson visits Amelia in secret, where the story is told through alternating narratives: in the present, Emerson deals with panic attacks, grief, her emerging queer identity, and reconciling her inherited “powers,” and from the past, Amelia recounts how her own complex family dynamics lead to her own realization of her magic as a young girl. Emerson sees Amelia’s mental illness not as a pathology, but as a misunderstood gift. 

One of the novel’s most striking aspects is its portrayal of Amelia, whose schizophrenia is framed by Emerson’s father and the staff at The Lavender House through a lens of misogyny, echoing historical stigmas surrounding women’s mental health. The tension between Emerson’s father, who fears Amelia’s influence on his daughter, underscores the stigma around mental health, especially in how her father dismisses the women in the family as “insane.” Knox writes, “My diagnosis was schizophrenia, which is what the doctors labeled anyone they didn’t understand. Years earlier, the word had been mania. Before that, hysteria” (16). Knox also associates Amelia’s schizophrenia with her wisdom, magical powers, and deep connection to the earth. This portrayal is quite refreshing in contrast to the negative stigma perpetrated by popular media, and a welcome one at that.

The mystical elements are balanced by the very real emotional landscape the characters navigate, giving the novel a unique tone that blends magical realism with slice-of-life storytelling. In moments throughout the novel, for example, Emerson’s panic attacks blur these lines. Emerson often recalls the “chill of death” (Knox 21), indicative of the day when her mother died, along with her mother’s voice apparently calling out to her. The deeply realistic depiction of her panic attacks adds a rawness to her perspective. Within the writing, a link is made between Emerson’s episodes and her own intuitive premonitions. This leaves readers in suspense of how she will eventually come into her own magic, and how the magic relates to the messages that were passed from past generations. In one scene, Emerson reflects: 

“I gripped the bed. I could see Amelia in that moment, navigating her world each day around being told what she needed to suppress. My sensation was not imagined; it was information. It was telling me I wasn’t on the right path” (127). 

Here, Emerson connects with her grandmother’s struggles, realizing that what may seem like irrational feelings are actually profound insights into the turmoil of her inner world. The nature of the inherited powers remains ambiguous but seem to stem from a heightened sense of empathy and limited ability to predict the future. Both Emerson and Amelia can intuitively feel the emotions and desires of others, accurately assessing their character and future life paths. 

By the end of the novel, Emerson learns to navigate her path, armed with the insights of her grandmother and the memory of her mother, as she steps into a future where she can fully accept herself. Emerson’s journey toward healing and self-discovery stands as a testament to the strength passed down through generations of women, inviting readers to reconsider the boundaries between madness and magic, illness and insight. We Arrive Uninvited is not just a novel about mental illness—it’s about empathy, survival, and the ways women navigate the world’s attempts to silence them in the name of embracing one’s full self.

We Arrive Uninvited is available from Steel Toe Books

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Claire Melanie Svec is a writer, poet, and singer-songwriter whose work is primarily focused on social dynamics, morality, and uncovering both the beauty and ugliness in mental health struggles. She published a short story piece that has won the first-place prize in fiction for The Ear Literary Magazine‘s Linda Purdy Memorial Prize. In addition to her editorial internship with Sundress Publications, she is currently serving as a fiction reader for West Trade Review. Progress on her upcoming work, projects, and adventures during her year-long stay in Paris, France, can be found on her Instagram @_clairedavila.