Trad Wife

Camille Deming, a 24-year-old woman, lives with her husband Graham in a remote farmhouse surrounded by wheat fields and bordered by a dark forest. Camille has built an online following as a "tradwife," a traditional wife influencer who posts curated content of her domestic life: cooking from scratch, decorating in a neutral palette, and projecting grateful, submissive wifehood. Her idol is Mara Shoemaker, a famous tradwife influencer with millions of followers and eight children. Camille has far fewer followers and believes a baby is the missing element preventing her growth.

The novel opens with Camille taking a pregnancy test while recording herself for social media. The test is negative. She deletes the footage and disposes of the evidence before Graham, a chief technology officer, comes home. Graham texts that he will be late. He has grown increasingly distant since they moved a month earlier, staying out late and avoiding intimacy.

Camille's backstory reveals a life shaped by male expectations. Her mother died in a car accident when Camille was eight, and she became her father's caretaker, learning to cook and clean to earn his approval. Before meeting Graham at a farmers market at 20, Camille attended the Coleman Aptitude in Science Track (CAST), a prestigious college program where she researched prion diseases, misfolded proteins linked to fatal brain diseases. After a harsh peer review and her father's insistence that science was not her path, she dropped out. Graham became the sole breadwinner while she managed the home and built her tradwife persona.

One evening, walking through the wheat field, Camille discovers a crumbling well near the forest's edge. She drops a penny inside and whispers a wish for a baby. The well behaves strangely: Her phone's flashlight cannot penetrate its darkness, and a cool breeze rises from within, accompanied by scraping sounds. She is rooted in place until a text from Graham breaks the spell.

Each night afterward, a recurring dream paralyzes Camille: A giant eye on her ceiling, encircled by spinning wings, demands to know why she wants a baby. She admits she needs someone who will not leave her, someone to give her purpose. The voice responds: "You shall have a baby." By day, shadows gather at the door, footsteps echo through empty rooms, and damp earth pervades the house. After days of sleep deprivation, Camille rationalizes the disturbances as angelic visitation.

The creature from the well manifests physically on a night Graham leaves to stay at a friend's house. It is human-sized with grayish-green scaled skin, white pupilless eyes, and bat-like wings. Furious at Graham's absence and suspecting infidelity after detecting Holy Peony perfume on him, Camille tells herself the creature is an angel. She decides that if Graham texts her, she will stop. He does not. She undresses and initiates sex. The creature brings her to orgasm twice, something Graham has never done, and deposits a burning-hot liquid inside her before disappearing.

The next morning, Camille vomits blood and discovers her stomach has swollen to the size of a two-month pregnancy overnight. She tells Graham at a staged dinner, recording his reaction. His face falls for a split second before he smiles. He asks few questions and does not offer parental leave. Camille lies that their neighbor Renee Colt, a stay-at-home mother who has been visiting with pies and unsolicited advice, is a trained midwife, keeping medical professionals away from her accelerating gestation.

The pregnancy announcement goes viral. Mara Shoemaker likes the video and begins engaging with Camille's posts. Ecstatic, Camille follows Mara's advice to eliminate folic acid from her diet, despite knowing it is critical for fetal development. A former CAST classmate, Melody Lateef, publicly reveals Camille's science background. Camille deletes the comments and blocks her.

The pregnancy progresses at a terrifying pace. Camille's hair falls out, her skin turns waxy, and she loses weight everywhere except her expanding belly. She craves raw meat, secretly consuming it while cooking Graham normal meals. At a church visit, Camille hallucinates that every congregant has a featureless face, then runs outside and vomits mud containing the copper penny from the well. The creature begins leaving dead animals near the house for Camille to eat at night.

Labor arrives after roughly two months. Camille gives birth alone on the living room floor, the creature entering to catch the baby and gnaw off the dark-green umbilical cord. She names her daughter Sweetheart. The baby has white pupilless eyes and grayish-green skin. Sweetheart refuses formula; the baby bites off two of Camille's toes and drinks from the wound, her saliva sealing the injury. Camille realizes her daughter feeds on human flesh and blood and begins cutting her own flesh daily to sustain Sweetheart. The baby grows at an extraordinary rate, speaking her first word, "food," and sleeping nearly 20 hours a day.

Camille's online persona and marriage unravel together. She deletes all photos of Sweetheart after trolls comment on the baby's greenish skin; Mara unfollows her. Camille discovers Graham's secret Instagram account and reads messages between him and a woman named Rose, in which Graham questions whether he and Camille even conceived together and calls Rose "sweetheart." Camille is devastated, but the bond she shares with her daughter and the creature has loosened Graham's hold on her. When she confronts Graham, he has already deleted the app and denies everything.

Violence enters the house when Renee arrives uninvited and picks up Sweetheart. The baby wakes, opens her white eyes, and bites into Renee's forearm. Camille strikes Renee with a marble rolling pin, killing her, and carries the body into the wheat field for Sweetheart to feed on. A police officer, Officer Lipton, arrives to investigate Renee's disappearance. When Lipton returns alone and sees Sweetheart's white eyes, Camille thrusts the baby at his throat, and Sweetheart tears out his trachea. Camille drives Lipton's squad car to Renee's empty house, then throws his belongings down the well along with a framed photo combining her face with Mara's, a symbol of abandoned aspirations.

Camille's body transforms in parallel. Dark scales grow on her scalp, her teeth sharpen into fangs, and her muscles thicken. She can no longer eat cooked food. The creature continues leaving fresh kills and fashions a braided wheat mat for Camille's knees during midnight feedings, small acts of care that contrast sharply with Graham's indifference.

After returning from church, Graham announces he is leaving and will seek an annulment, claiming Camille is no longer the woman he married. Recognizing that Graham could take Sweetheart or expose her daughter's nature, Camille leads him to the nursery. When Graham sees Sweetheart standing with her white eyes open, he recoils, calling her "unholy." While his back is turned, Camille strikes him with the nursery lamp's iron base, then bites into his body, consuming him.

Camille records Sweetheart feeding on the baby monitor, uploads the footage with the caption "Fuck you, Mara Shoemaker. #tradwife," and drops her wedding ring on the bedroom floor. She carries Sweetheart to the wheat field, where the creature waits. In a final dream, a mosaic of eyes tells her, "When you are ready, we are ready." She responds: "I am ready." In the hall mirror, her eyes have turned completely white and her heartbeat has stopped. At the well, she drops the penny into the darkness and tears off her clothing. The creature kisses her as Sweetheart takes her first steps, calling "Ma!" and "Food." The three of them kneel over Lipton's remains for a shared meal before disappearing into the humming forest.