Pitch:

TRUE GRIT x BLACK MIRROR x THE REVENANT: When Deputies murder her mother for refusing to harm a convicted child, Lady Mae inherits her role as Settlement Five’s Butcher—a court-appointed torturer of criminals. As her inner rage grows, she endures scorn from all but her childhood love, the bastard of the meanest man in town. But when Deputies arrest her love next, Lady Mae must choose: does she escape the settlement for redemption, or seek vengeance—even if it kills her.

Excerpt:

When Lady Mae went into the kitchen to scrub the floor, she found her mother had left her pack on the worn table. Though she’d been taught from as far back as she could remember that they were her mother’s tools and not toys, lately, when Lady Mae found herself in the presence of the pack, there was a knocking at her breast and a speeding in her heart. The pack was small and ordinary, no bigger than her mother’s cookbook; alone on the table, the tools inside remained harmless. But in her mother’s hands—and soon her own—they commanded respect. Absolution, a kind of credence that her mother had taught Lady Mae. In the seventeen years she’d been alive, she’d never disobeyed her mother purposefully, but that morning as the wind blew up against the window, she walked over to the wooden table, pulled out a rickety chair, and sat. She dragged the pack towards her, the leather cracked and shredded by the clasp. Her mother would need it, and Lady Mae resolved that she’d walk it to the depot herself. But first, she wanted to see what was inside.