The Weight

by Melissa Mendes

A relative’s depression-era diary inspires a young woman’s journey to adulthood

Edie comes into the world calmly as the adults around her rage. Her father is a cruel man who beats her mother regularly and much of Edie’s young life is spent trying to escape this tyrant. “Why doesn’t she ever cry?...Gives me the creeps.” Of course, being a child means she lives a child’s life—she still has laughter-filled sleepovers and outdoor adventures with the local rat pack of kids still too young to work. But Edie’s heart grows callous as her father becomes drunker and angrier.

Melissa Mendes’ pastoral cartooning captures the openness of rural America—soft breezes, tall grass, whirring grasshoppers, rainstorms, skinned knees. But all the while, the cruelty, the disappointment of man lurks behind the barn and in the trailer. Life can be stubbed out as easily as a cigarette tossed in the dirt. One moment all focus, next, gone without a thought. Will Edie find herself repeating a cycle or will she be free like she felt as a child?

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Womens, Family, Historical

580 pages, Paperback

Published September 2, 2025

Reviews

[Rod Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slice-of-life domestic violence?

We follow the ups and downs of Edith "Edie" Markowski from her birth in the 1930s through raising her own child in the 1950s in small towns and rural areas of the Mid-Atlantic states.

The topic is heavy, and the book is too at 574 pages, but I breezed through it in less than ninety minutes due to the spare dialogue and lack of captions. Though quickly absorbed, the images and events linger in the mind with a weight some may find unpleasant or triggering.


(Best of 2025 Project: I'm reading all the graphic novels that made it onto one or more of these lists:

• Washington Post 10 Best Graphic Novels of 2025
• Publishers Weekly 2025 Graphic Novel Critics Poll
• NPR's Books We Love 2025: Favorite Comics and Graphic Novels

This book made the NPR and PW lists.)

[Rachel Havrilla · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 ★

I tried to take my time and read this book but from the moment I picked it up I couldnt put it down. This story is a heart wretching look at mid-century America and one family's cycle of abuse and love.

[Ethan · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

A really great but very hard book, with an abrupt (though thematically appropriate) that won’t satisfy everyone—not that “satisfaction” is necessarily the goal but still.

Gorgeous art style and (random but important to me) just a very nice page/paper feel.

Apologies for the cliche phrasing but really it’s a brutal and beautiful book. Would’ve gladly spent even more time with these characters, especially Tess and Leland—they’re just so precious!

[Aehavs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just an incredible story. She poured her heart into this one.

[Savana Brakeman · Rating 2 out of 5]

My first graphic novel! Emphasis on graphic…this book discussed DV, generational trauma, etc. I just picked it up because I thought the cover was cool (I didn’t expect such a sad story).

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

this graphic novel didnt have a lot of dialogue but boy oh boy was it a telling story. some women just dont know how strong they are until they have to be!

[Konstantinos Georgokitsos · Rating 5 out of 5]

A painful book to read. We follow Edie, a girl born in the first half of the last century in a farm environment, and through a tough and violent life. The violence - the central theme of the book - hits hard, which is the point, and contrasts sharply the open fields and small village setting. Mendes' expressive drawings draw you into Edie's life and you feel her hope, desperation, and physical pain in the process. This impressive comic book has made a big impact with me and I can suggest it to anyone.

[kate j · Rating 4 out of 5]

i thought this was beautifully done. bleak and also, full of love. some stunning quiet moments: edie walking home through incoming darkness and fireflies, edie curled up asleep under a quilt with bosco the cat. i think it speaks to mendes’ talent as a graphic novelist that in a book so full of loneliness, these silent spreads still read peaceful.

[Megan Kirby · Rating 4 out of 5]

I planned to read a couple pages of this book to start and I ended up devouring the whole thing in one sitting. Melissa's so skilled at capturing movement and action. There is relentless forward momentum from the first panel to the last. A real feat of comics creation!

[Rainy Marie Butts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an amazing book. It was so heartbreaking and yet still has some fun hopefully and happy moments. This was such an impactful read. Highly recommend this! I felt all the emotions and felt for the characters in the story. The cycle continues.

[Heidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Devastating.

[Stephanie Tournas · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bleeding woman gives birth at her parents’ home, while her husband ignores her to have a cigarette. He continues to abuse her as their child, Edie, grows up watching her mother carry the weight of staying with a malicious alcoholic husband. And then, a tragedy occurs, and Edie goes to live with her grandparents on their farm. This is a heartbreaking beginning to the story, but you want to know: what will Edie’s life be like?

One thing the novel tells us is that there is beauty everywhere: there are gorgeous scenes of farmland, animals, and people, whose facial expressions deliver volumes of emotion. Sparse text complements the black and white artwork delivered in neatly bordered panels. Each chapter signals a new period in Edie’s life, and her growth and the aging of her grandparents keep the pacing dynamic. And there is always blood. Edie stays remarkably static, with her tousled hair, tomboy ways and saturnine affect, but there are laugh-out-loud moments in her life doing farm chores with her grandparents, playing with her friends and encountering changes in her body. Despite the melancholy that Edie carries, her life is not cheerless. I found I could not put down this totally immersive coming of age story set in the wake of the Depression.

[lucy black · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Weight is a family saga about a small family living in the middle of nowhere and trying to make a life. The main character is Edie, an angry young woman who has seen too much violence and mean men but still finds joy and beauty in the natural world. The setting is a heady mix of bleak and cold poverty, trailers and dirt. But also - lush fields of wheat, beautiful sweet cow eyes, fresh creeks teaming with life. Edie has a moving relationship with her grandparents, the sweetest farm couple ever. The way they show understated and unconditional love is really affecting. The lightness of the family balances with the darkness of the men who enter the scene and ruin everything.

This is everything I look for in a graphic novel, the drawings compliment the text perfectly and add depth and detail. The length is just right and nothing felt too shallow or rushed. It ended too soon for me, I wanted to see what happened to Edie after the crashing and intense finale.

[Stacey Palazzolo]

Wow. What an excellent comic story. I loved it. I didn't know which direction the story was going, but it is a coming of age story. It's about family, friends, rural community, and life traps that include domestic violence. Each picture was so well expressed. Graphic books are not always this easy to understand emotionally. It's deep and has a huge range of emotions. It also spans years for the main character, Edie, who we grow up with and see how her life unfolds. I really liked her and how she handled tough decisions. Sometimes life happens and you have to figure it out, even when the choices kind of suck. Yet, there are a lot of wonderful moments of greatness and simplicity if you take time to experience it. Our main character does this. She is...relatable for me.

[Angela Murat · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could not put this down. It had me completely enthralled.

Incredible storytelling that pulled me right to the core of what it was really like to live in Edie's shoes. It's been a while since I've felt so emotionally connected to a story. The author perfectly captures atmosphere, emotion, and the passage of time with so much depth. It all felt very real. You would have these chapters of her life weighted with heaviness and misery, yet punctuated by lighter passages filled with friends and laughter - the way life usually insists on mixing the unbearable with the fleetingly joyful.

And surprisingly, I was very satisfied with the open-ended ending.

[Maddie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This graphic novel is a doorstop, but it flies by thanks to the deft hand of Mendes who blends a dark and emotional family story of mid-century rural America with beautiful nature drawings. Readers should note that the idyllic scenes are juxtaposed with devastating and vivid abuse and gore as Edie is born and comes of age with intergenerational cycles of trauma. Mendes was inspired by reading the Depression-era diary of her grandfather after his passing, and the emotions and connections to the past are beautiful and brutal. Even if you’re not a graphic novel reader, this is worth a try if you liked Corregidora by Gayl Jones or A Grandmother Begins the Story by Michelle Porter.

[vanessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. This was so sad and beautiful. The subject matter is dark: lots of violence on the page (accidents, domestic abuse, intergenerational trauma, and death). But it feels so vivid and real with the immediacy of the illustrations. This is a thick book, but there isn’t a lot of text. Instead, so much emotion comes through from the facial expressions and action of the story. It’s a long book but feels like a breeze, like watching a movie with nonstop action. Sweet Edie. And her grandparents are lovely. I feel this depicted rural life and relationships in that midcentury time period. I was really sucked into this incredibly crafted and illustrated story.

[Shoshanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really really good, oftentimes quite sad though. This comic follows a young woman from when she was a baby to when she is a mother, set in midcentury rural United States. The illustration style almost reminds me of Noah Van Sciver, but the writing has more emotion to it, be it warmth or sadness. You see so much about how cycles of poverty, adversity, family violence can effect a person. Highly Recommended. It's worth it!

[nel ݁༉‧₊˚ .ᐟ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I stumbled upon this book in an unfamiliar library as I was hiding from the cold, and it turned out to be that kind of random read that surprises you in the best way. Despite not using any colors, the illustrations depict both the somber as well as the vibrant parts of Edie’s life in such a raw manner. This story was so very heavy, yet I couldn’t help but finish it in one sitting.

[Eva · Rating 3 out of 5]

*** 3.5 STARS ***

This book was amazing! I am only giving 3.5 stars because it was a less spectacular ending. I wanted to know more about what happened afterwards but I suppose that Edie broke the abusive cycle in the end and that’s the happy ending. Either way I blew through this and it was very enjoyable.

[Mitchell Friedman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lynd Ward Award. Dark. Not real deep. This captures nastiness and farm life. The art is pretty good. The writing breezy. Not a ton of text. Mostly just serial domestic violence. Not really my idea of an award winner. There's not enough capturing of place or time. Or any real distinct characterization. Not bad, just not awesome.

[Rita Egan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Darkest graphic novel I've read to date.

An unflinching portrayal of mid century rural America, cycles of behaviour and deeply ingrained patterns of domestic abuse.

At 574 pages I thought this would take all weekend, but in fact it took barely an hour to read.

As they say, a picture paints a thousand words.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was like 4-4.5 really! It was really well done though very very bleak. But excellent illustrations that showed such emotion and tenderness. I think it was very well executed and showed a typical vulnerable woman’s life of the times.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edie's life from her birth, the death of her mother at the hands of an abusive husband, to Edie's possible death the same way.

4.5 stars - the title is perfect for this. It was heavy and brutal and seemed so very real that it hurt.

[Chr*s Browning]

Affecting and well drawn, but also a “cycle of violence” story that’s been done many times before - not one to ask if we still need these stories as they’re still true, but what does this add to the conversation beside a litany of heartbreak punctuated by brief respites of happiness?

[Streettwanderer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A story of survival that is as beautiful as it is brutal.

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully done - but harrowing and heart-rending. Ugh.

[Tina · Rating 3 out of 5]

very dark and violent but a quick read

[Earla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read in one sitting, that says a lot. 😀 The storyline is disturbing in places yet drew me in with its descriptive scenery and emotional adversity in a family’s circle of life. Great book!

[Avery · Rating 5 out of 5]

A graphic novel I couldn’t look away from. Despite being in told in a beautiful grayscale, I felt all the beautiful and pain in full color.