Accomplished award-winning author bases new book Hatchet Girls in Fall River

An axe murder in Fall River may sound familiar, but in a new upcoming young adult mystery book, it is all fiction.

Diana Rodriguez Wallach’s eighth novel, Hatchet Girls, is a Latinx horror story.

When Mariella Morse accuses her boyfriend, Vik Gomez, of murdering her wealthy parents with an axe, the town is quick to believe her. It doesn’t help that Vik is caught standing over her parents’ bodies with blood on his hands, unable to remember anything about the night in question.

But Vik’s sister, Tessa, knows that Vik would never be capable of such a gruesome crime. Haunted by the mistakes she made that led her family to move to Fall River, MA in the first place, she sets out to prove her brother’s innocence.

Tessa’s search for answers will lead her into a sprawling, notoriously cursed forest, where she and Mariella must face a darkness that has lurked within their town since before the days of Lizzie Borden.

When Wallach signed the deal with publisher Random House, Fall River Reporter asked her how she came to the idea of having Fall River as the backdrop for her new book.

“The concept came from me wondering what would happen if another mother and father were killed by axe in the same town Lizzie Borden is from. Then when I learned about the events that have occurred nearby in the Freetown Woods–from Satanic Panic to Native American Wars to supernatural “Bridgewater Triangle” activity–it felt like a great setting for a book.”

While Wallach is from Pennsylvania, her career from reporter to author, strangely had its start in Massachusetts in a way.

When on a vacation across New England while she was still a journalist, she stopped into a Salem, MA psychic who told her she would be writing children’s books. Convinced it was a sign, she began to write her first novel. Over 15 years later comes Hatchet Girls.

Author of the award-winning thriller Proof of Lies; Wallach also holds a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University.

Wallach also has interest in the Scholarship City as she traveled here last year for book research and a stop for the night at the Lizzie Borden House.

Hatchet Girls will be available on shelves on 10/10/2023.