Both Lila and Cheri were treated poorly by the people of Henbane. What was it about them that made them easy targets and did superstition play a role?

Both Lila and Cheri were treated poorly by the people of Henbane. Did they have similar qualities that made them easy targets? What role did superstition play in this?

They were "under dogs". They both had characteristics that people make fun of or feel that they are superior to. Even though both of these women struggled to be strong women and they had formed friendships, they were an easy target to be preyed upon.

I think this was a small town that was fairly isolated and where people were naturally suspicious of outsiders. Lila, being so pretty and young and arriving on her own, raised questions, and before she could answer them the town's residents created their own answers. When women saw the way the men were attracted to her they became jealous and that did not help her situation. As for Cheri, well, she was slow, she was the child of a woman no one respected, she didn't fit in, and that made her an easy target in a place where no one was exactly advocating for tolerance and acceptance.

Superstition, jealousy, ignorance, social status all played a part in why the girls were isolated. Again, these are special actors in a small community. No one who hasn't lived in a small community might have a difficult time understanding the deprivation and isolation.

Perhaps, they just were not a part of this town's inbred community. Cheri, while a part of this community, was portrayed as dim-witted and there was an obvious lack of respect for her and her mother. Lila was brought here for other purposes but was also flawed by her past, her beauty and her need to escape at any cost. They were easy targets for abuse. What I am still working through, while this story indeed kept me on the couch reading through an 18 inch snow storm, I still have trouble with the graphic details presented. There was enough of a story line, the need for such desperate language and graphic details did not in any way enhance the story for me. Does anyone else feel this way?

Lila was beautiful and exotic looking, men were attracted to her, people also thought she was a witch, Lila had no one therefore no one would be looking for her. Cheri was considered slow or dim-witted, not even her mother cared much for her. When Cheri disappeared the only person who really cared was Lucy.

These girls were marked by the people of Henbane as worthless nobodies. I was also not happy with the more graphic scenes. To me it just seemed easier to live and let live than to fight for the underdogs.

I have to think that Lila had issues with the townspeople because she was an outsider, beautiful, and had the attention of so many men. I think the "witch" label was just a convenient way to label her for her "otherness." Sarah Cole was well-known as the local healer and yet she never attracted the same level of ostracism.

As in our society at large, if you dare to be different, people get uncomfortable. We fear what we do not know.

Even Birdie, who ultimately is a very sympathetic character, distrusts and dislikes Lila based on her appearance and her clothes. The superstition part was a bit hard to swallow--did anyone honestly think she was a witch apart from her mentally unstable mother-in-law and possibly Jaime Petree? It seems more likely they feared her beauty and the impact it had on men in the town.

When you are in a situation where the people are inherently distrustful, and a lot of them uneducated, you will undoubtedly deal with a lot more superstition and fear. To many people anything they don't understand, is automatically bad or wrong. When someone is "different" that is often enough to make them an outsider and outcast. Cheri was weak because of her mental acuity. Lila was the other side of that, strong and somewhat fearless, so that she made the people in the town afraid.

Both Lila and Cheri were different. Lila was an outsider in a closed community and cheri was considered slow. Cheri was weak and poor and probably would never have escaped her life in Henbane but the fact that Lila was strong and beautiful also added to the natural mistrust of the people.

I agree totally that people are afraid of those who are different or have low self-esteem themselves. They are often cruel to these people and then there are those who just stand by and say nothing.

I think both women were vulnerable in a small town where the overall mentality was not very respectful of women. Lila had a stroke of luck that Carl fell in love with her and came looking for her at a time that enabled him and Ransome to "rescue" her - if only briefly. Cheri's mental deficiency and lack of a caring family made her easy prey. However, neither women should have been "prey" to sex trafficking if the culture of Henbane was more decent and respectful of women. The town was so backwards, that it seemed any woman, even the child rescued in the end, Hollie, was vulnerable to trafficking by the men in town unless the woman had a powerful man/men to protect her (Lucy had her dad and uncle; the mayor's daughter her father and uncle, etc.). This is a sad town, and one I hope not based in reality in the Ozarks.