Quantum Girl Theory

In the opening minutes of Ryan’s debut, a privileged white student named Paula Jean Weldon disappears from Bennington College in 1946. In subsequent chapters, Ryan spins possible fates for Weldon, many of them grim: she is murdered by a lover, she joins a circus, she is lobotomized and married to the doctor who performed the operation. Paula’s potential endings are interwoven with a longer narrative in which Paula has transformed herself into Mary, a woman who uses her psychic gift to help find other missing girls. Drawn by reward money, Mary insinuates herself into a Southern town where one white girl and two Black girls are missing, although only the white girl’s disappearance has garnered publicity. Narrator Saskia Maarleveld’s smoky voice resignedly conveys the weight of societal burdens. Joining Maarleveld, P. J. Ochlan sets the scene by reading newspaper-style interludes with the brassy aplomb of an old-fashioned newsreel. Joniece Abbott-Pratt narrates a section from the point-of-view of one of the missing girls; her soft Southern accent presents a compelling contrast to Maarleveld’s world-weary tone.