The Weight of Blood

Set in the fictional "sundown town" of Springville, Georgia, the story follows the final days of multiracial high-school senior Madison Washington who has been oppressed by her white supremacist father and forced to hide her ethnicity by passing as white and straightening her hair. The book is a retelling of Stephen King's 1974 horror novel Carrie, that elaborates on its themes in a 21st–century context.[1] Its narrative follows the epistolary style of Carrie, while also adding sections of third-person omniscient action sequences in between transcripts of news articles and podcasts about the events of the novel from the future. It deals with themes of US racism, high-school bullying, and modern witchcraft.[2]

Jackson has said that she wanted to honor King's work while at the same time subverting the message it puts first to provoke thought and discussion amongst her readers.[3]

The book bounces back and forth the present day (implied to be sometime in the 2020s) and May 2014.

In the present day, a podcast series is released detailing the events of a massive fire at a prom in Springville, Georgia. It is stated that half the town was killed, and the perpetrator was (according to the survivors) a high-school senior named Madison Washington, or Maddy. In 2014, Maddy goes to gym class and is worrying about the sky, as it looks like it is about to rain. She begins to do a track running exercise with her classmates, until rain begins to fall. It is revealed that Maddy's father is a white supremacist who artificially straightens her hair with sodium hydroxide and a hot comb every day, and that the rain will ruin its straightness. She has been avoiding being outdoors in the rain until now. She begins to run indoors, but is too late. Her hair reverts to its natural form and she is revealed as biracial to her classmates, who mock her. Later that day in history class, her white classmates throw pencils and other objects in her hair, resulting in her triggering a then-unknown telekinetic event in which she raises the chairs and tables off the ground and destroys the windows of the classroom. The incident is filmed and goes viral on social media. The destruction is attributed to an earthquake.