Set in 1917, benevolent follows four young women consigned to New York’s Inwood Benevolent Home, a draconian reformatory for fallen and friendless girls.
Forced into drudgery in the basement laundry, the women forge unlikely connections. But when one of them finds herself in trouble, the others must decide what they're willing to risk in order to help her.
Fierce, funny, and frank, benevolent is a piercing illumination of female solidarity: both the intimate places it can be found — and the shocking ways it can be broken
