Our culture has had a minor fascination with the notion of dragons, whether they existed in our history, or as creatures of fantasy. This novel imagines a global historical event, the Mass Dragoning of 1955, when hundreds of thousands of women worldwide transformed into dragons, and flew away, leaving behind fractured families and bewildered friends. Why did this happen? What impact would this have on the loved ones left behind? What of the biological process that caused this to happen? And could this continue to happen? How would society react to this event?

The novel unfolds through the perspective of Alexandra Green, a young girl who witnesses her elderly neighbor in the aftermath of her dragoning, and whose Aunt Marla, her mother’s only sibling and closest friend, disappears after her dragoning. Marla leaves behind her child Beatrice, only a toddler, and Alex’s mother raises the child as her own. We see everything through Alex’s eyes, as the government, in the throes of the Red Scare and McCarthyism, tries to bury the event and expunge all traces. The book addresses the consequences of attempting to suppress reality, psychologically for people like Alex, socially, governmentally, and even scientifically. Dr. Henry Gantz was removed from his positions as Chief of Internal Medicine at Johns Hopkins University Hospital and research fellow at the National Institutes of Health for his research projects into the biology and psychology of the dragoning phenomenon. All research is suppressed, all media coverage is forbidden.

Alex struggles with her beloved aunt’s disappearance, especially when her mother’s cancer reappears and she tragically dies, leaving Alex, only 15, to raise young Beatrice. Alex wonders why her mother didn’t dragon— had she wanted to, but stayed behind due to her deep love for her daughter, and her responsibility for Beatrice? Was the cancer that took her life a result of not dragoning? And what of Alex— why does she not feel the impulse to dragon? Why do some women dragon and others do not? The story becomes more complex when dragons begin to mysteriously return. The novel is filled with several well-imagined scenes, such as the mass dragoning at Alex’s prom. Barnhill succeeds at describing these phenomena and their various reprecussions most realistically.

So what is Barnhill trying to say with this book? Is dragoning a metaphor? Is the entire book an allegory? I of course have a few notions, but I don’t wish to be a spoiler. This is a good novel for a book discussion, where readers can float their ideas of what Barnhill is trying to say. Recommended.