In The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne, the titular heroine Babs is a proud Franco-American, a doting grandmother, an aging widow, and a vicious crime matriarch who rules her small town of Waterville, Maine with a cast-iron fist. She controls the flow of drugs into Little Canada with the help of her loyal lieutenants—all her girlfriends since they were teenagers—and with her eldest daughter, Lori, a dishonorably discharged Marine and addict, who wants nothing to do with the family business but who harbors a sense of familial obligation that, much like her drug habit, she can’t quite shake.

When a drug kingpin discovers that his numbers are down in the upper northeast, he sends a malevolent force, known only as The Man, to investigate. At the same time, Babs's youngest daughter, Sis, goes missing, which doesn't seem at all like a coincidence. In twenty-four hours, Sis will be found dead, unleashing an inferno of fury in Babs that will force the whole town to seek shelter from her wrath. Merde.

Ron Currie is the award-winning author of five novels. He has won the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award, the Addison M. Metcalf Award, the Alex Award, and the Pushcart Prize. His books have been translated into fifteen languages, and his short fiction and nonfiction have received recognition in Best American anthologies. As a screenwriter he worked most recently on the Apple TV+ series Extrapolations and has developed projects with AMC Studios, Amblin Television, and ITV America. He lives in Portland, Maine, and teaches in the University of Southern Maine Stonecoast MFA program.