MALL GODDESS

A rebellious janitor urges a small town to save her beloved mall in Dahlman’s novel.

In Fort Empire, Iowa, Kylie Kaiser, a 40-something, pink-haired mall custodian of 20 years, has a dream to launch an empire centering Punk Piglets—inspirational miniature ceramic pig figurines—and use the money to help animal welfare. When the mayor tells her that the Fort Empire Mall is set to close, Kylie has one month to save it. But the return of Kylie’s high school enemy Wendi, now a Yale-educated agricultural business mogul who has a mayor-approved vertical farming vision for the mall, brings complications. Not to mention that Wendi is married to Justin Wayne, the high school love whom Kylie never got over, or that a hot, rule-loving new sheriff has arrived in town. When a skylight crashes down on a mall gathering that Wendi organized, Kylie immediately suspects sabotage, but the simultaneous reveal of Kylie’s secret art studio threatens her big plan for a Punk Empire Extravaganza. Still, Kylie is undeterred, and her relentless hope calls for pivoting. Kylie is a flawed yet sympathetic protagonist making the most of a life that hasn’t exactly been kind to her. Her naïveté and apparent contradictions (she’s a punk dating a cop who allows her to trespass in the mall) make her well rounded and realistic, offering readers a passionate underdog main character to root for. Her emotional journey is portrayed with genuine heart and self-reflection, touching on themes of building community, leaving the past behind, and seeing your enemies with clearer eyes: “I thought of a beautiful rose whose pastel petals and stems were withering to rotting brown. Not necessarily in a bad way. Just in the natural way of life’s cycle running its course…It was time, now, for Kylie to focus 100% on Kylie.”

A paean to punk, art, and the power of community.