Baby Teeth

Seven-year-old Hanna Jensen has never spoken a word, though she is perfectly capable of speech. Her silence is deliberate, a weapon against her mother, Suzette, whom she views with contempt. Her father, Alex, a Swedish-born architect who runs the firm Jensen & Goldstein, is the only person Hanna considers worthy of her love. The novel alternates between Hanna's and Suzette's perspectives, gradually revealing the depth of the child's hostility and the fractures it creates within the family.

The story opens with Hanna undergoing a CT scan. Suzette, who has Crohn's disease, a chronic inflammatory bowel condition, waits anxiously, dressed immaculately to deflect any perception of neglect. The doctor finds nothing physically wrong and refers them to Dr. Beatrix Yamamoto, a developmental child psychologist. Suzette feels relief and dread: If the issue is behavioral, the silence is a choice.

Hanna's narration provides the fuller picture. She withholds speech because words feel unreliable and because silence torments Suzette. Flashbacks reveal deliberate sabotage: Hanna terrorized the last babysitter, Abha, by stealing jewelry, defecating on the floor, and barking in her face, ending the family's use of sitters permanently. Hanna interprets every attempt to hire a sitter or enroll her in school as an effort to abandon her. Suzette's backstory emerges in parallel. Her Crohn's went undiagnosed for years because her mother dismissed the symptoms. An emergency bowel resection at seventeen left lasting physical and emotional scars, and her mother was otherwise emotionally absent. Suzette met Alex at her first job, and he helped her recover from her traumatic youth.

At home, Hanna writes profanity during a spelling lesson and tears up the evidence. When Alex arrives, she transforms into a sweet child. Suzette tries to tell him Hanna spoke, whispering, "I'm not Hanna," but Hanna denies it. Alex suggests Suzette was affected by painkillers from her recent surgery, which infuriates her. He reluctantly agrees to pursue therapy and a new school. Hanna has already been expelled from two schools, and Suzette has been homeschooling her since, shielding Alex from the worst behaviors to protect his emotional state.

Hanna's campaign escalates. She researches witches online and discovers Marie-Anne Dufosset, the last woman burned as a witch in France in 1679, adopting Marie-Anne as an alter ego. She whispers to Suzette in a French accent, creates a collage placing a secret photograph of sleeping Suzette among postmortem images of the dead, and wraps tights around her own arm to fabricate bruises she shows to Alex, implying Suzette hurt her. The incident drives a deeper wedge between the parents.

When Suzette visits Sunnybridge, an alternative school, Hanna barks savagely at the principal, Mrs. Wade. Unfazed, Mrs. Wade recommends the Tisdale School, which specializes in children with behavioral challenges. Meanwhile, Hanna sabotages Suzette's Imodium capsules, opening enough to fill the top of the bottle with flour instead of medicine. She also cuts chunks of Suzette's hair while she sleeps.

At Tisdale, the principal, known as Mr. G, is warm and unflappable. Suzette enrolls Hanna and schedules a therapy appointment with Beatrix for the same afternoon. Before school begins, Hanna stages a disturbing performance: Suzette finds her writhing under her comforter, claiming the devil visits her and fills her with power. Beatrix asks whether Hanna could have been sexually abused. Suzette denies it but agrees to a Monday session.

At Beatrix's office, Suzette reveals the full extent of Hanna's behavior while Alex arrives late and learns about the sexual performance for the first time. He is angry Suzette kept it from him, but Beatrix frames Hanna's alter ego as a psychological mechanism: a way for a child who refuses to speak to hide behind a persona permitted to talk. Days later, Hanna provokes a violent incident at Tisdale. Left alone with Ian, a boy who wears a protective helmet due to a self-harming condition, she removes his helmet and terrorizes him with barking until he bashes his head against the wall, requiring hospitalization. Hanna is expelled. At home, Alex finally breaks down and admits he may have been the "bigger problem" by refusing to acknowledge Hanna's behavior.

Hanna then launches her most premeditated attack. Enraged that Suzette destroyed a potato creature she had lovingly made, modeled after characters called UnderSlumberBumbleBeasts from her favorite bedtime story, which Suzette mistook for a voodoo doll, Hanna spreads thumbtacks beside Suzette's bed and wakes her with a disturbance. Suzette steps barefoot onto the tacks. When Hanna appears in the doorway gripping a claw hammer, Suzette screams that she will call the police, and Hanna retreats. They contact Beatrix, who tells them committing Hanna to a hospital is an option if they feel unsafe.

Alex proposes using Valborg, the Swedish Walpurgis Night festival that traditionally welcomes spring and wards off evil spirits, to symbolically banish Marie-Anne. Hanna will draw a picture of the witch and burn it in the backyard fire pit. The ceremony becomes the family's first collaborative project. During the ritual, however, Hanna scoops burning embers with her fire stick and flings them at Suzette after Suzette trips and spills wine on herself. Hanna plunges the glowing tip into her mother's cheek, leaving a sizzling burn. Alex douses the flames and reflexively throws Hanna away from Suzette, spraining her wrist. At Urgent Care, Suzette sustains significant burns, and scarring is likely. A doctor questions both parents about domestic abuse. Suzette tells the truth: Her daughter is the one hurting her.

At an emergency session, Beatrix communicates with Hanna through drawings. Hanna depicts Suzette as a witch who casts spells on Alex to sever the bond between father and daughter. When asked if she wants Suzette dead, she draws a large X over the witch-mother's face and tears the paper in half. Beatrix tells the parents that Hanna's behavior goes beyond typical defiance, identifying a pattern of calculated violence and absence of remorse that she cannot distinguish from psychopathy, though she emphasizes that early, intensive treatment can help build empathy skills in children. She recommends Marshes, a specialized inpatient facility outside Harrisburg with around-the-clock supervision. Typical stays last one to three years. Alex is devastated but agrees after Beatrix states that Suzette's life will be in danger if Hanna remains home.

Suzette and Alex make Hanna a new UnderSlumberBumbleBeast out of old denim, buttons, and dried beans. Hanna names it Skog, the Swedish word for forest. They drive her to Marshes on Wednesday, telling her only that she is going to a new school in the country with horses. When Hanna realizes her parents have left, she runs outside, sees the car driving away, and collapses screaming in the arms of Audrey, a staff member.

In the weeks that follow, Suzette and Alex rebuild their relationship. Suzette is diagnosed with severe anemia explaining her chronic fatigue. While baking, she discovers an empty Imodium capsule in the flour canister, confirming Hanna's medication tampering. Alex acknowledges that sending Hanna away was the right decision.

One evening, Hanna calls from Marshes. She speaks clearly, in her own voice, for the first time. She tells Alex she loves him in Swedish, greets her mother, says she is sorry, and begs to come home. Suzette panics and whispers that they cannot bring her back. She erupts in an anguished speech about everything she has endured and insists she deserves the life they are rebuilding. Alex, weeping, tells Hanna she must stay, then breaks down and hands the phone to Suzette, who whispers, "Not enough," and disconnects.

The final pages return to Hanna's perspective. Devastated that even speaking was not enough, she concludes that Suzette's hold over Alex is too powerful to break from a distance. She confides in Skog that she must become "the best girl ever" to earn her way back. Her goal is not rehabilitation but strategy: She will appear perfectly reformed so she can return home and resume her campaign against Suzette. Daddy needs her to save him, she whispers, by taking care of Mommy. The novel ends with Hanna resolving to be perfectly good, not out of remorse, but as the opening move in a much longer game.