My Heart Is a Chainsaw

My Heart Is a Chainsaw is a novel by Stephen Graham Jones, published in 2021. Jones is a Blackfoot Indigenous American author of speculative fiction and horror fiction. My Heart Is a Chainsaw is the first book in the Indian Lake Trilogy, a series about a slasher-obsessed part Indigenous American teenage girl named Jade Daniels in the fictional town of Proofrock, Idaho. It won the 2021 Bram Stoker Award for best horror novel. The sequel, Don’t Fear the Reaper, was published in 2023, and the final installment of the trilogy, The Angel of Indian Lake, is anticipated in 2024. My Heart Is a Chainsaw introduces Jade Daniels’s coming-of-age journey against the backdrop of a series of violent murders that plague her small community. While Jade sees herself as a social outcast, her encyclopedic knowledge of 1980s slasher movies means that she is the only person who realizes the true nature of these crimes: A masked killer is on a quest for revenge.

This guide refers to the edition published in 2021 by Saga Press.

Content Warning: This novel includes depictions of death by suicide, child sexual abuse, rape, murder, and debilitating alcohol addiction.