This novel is my literary pick for 2019. I rarely buy fiction, especially hardcover novels, but this one jumped off the shelf at my local Indie bookstore, and when a book claims you like that, you have to take it home. Besides, the black, silver and hot pink cover had me spellbound. I read it twice, cover to cover, back to back. First, to find out what happens to our feisty Métis hero, Joan of Arcand, and then again to savour the poetic brilliance of Dimaline’s writing.
“If her heart was a song, someone smashed the bass drum and pulled all the strings off the guitar. Notes fell like hail, plinking into the soft basket of her guts.” This is Joan when she sees her lost husband, Victor Boucher, sitting in an old green chair on the stage at a revivalist tent in a Walmart parking lot in Orillia, Ontario. She’s been searching for him for eleven months and six days—since they had words and he stalked off into the woods. Only this man wearing Victor’s skin and speaking with Victor’s voice isn’t Victor. He’s Reverend Eugene Wolff.
Then Joan meets Thomas Heiser. In his blue suit with his gold watch, gold eyes, and too-white skin, Heiser is a resource development specialist who runs the Ministry of the New Redemption. Like those who’ve come before him, Heiser is intent on taking coveted land from the First People by using the mission system. If the resource companies can convert the traditional people, it’s so much easier to take their lands, build a pipeline, dig a mine. Somehow, this creepy stalker, in his daffodil-yellow tie, has stolen Victor, memories and all, and is using him as a frontman to undermine his own people.
Then the unthinkable happens. As in “Little Red Riding Hood” Joan’s grandmother, Mere, is killed by a wolfish creature, a rogarou.
At night, the rogarou wanders the roads. He is the threat mothers use to keep their children in line. To warn their girls to stay home. To keep their boys on the right path. Pronounced in Michif as rogarou, it’s derived from the French loup garou. Wolf Man. “A dog, a man, a wolf. He was clothed, he was naked in his fur, he wore moccasins to jig.” A shape-shifting monster, the rogarou comes to hunt, though he’s not quite the European werewolf. For one thing, you don’t become a rogarou simply because you get bit. It’s far more complex than that. And this wolf can dance.
As genres go, Empire of Wild could be labelled urban fantasy. It fulfills expectations. It’s contemporary, thrilling, sexy, mysterious, mythical. But I prefer the term mythic fiction. Like Joan of Arc, our Joan is a tenacious warrior of French Catholic descent, but it is her Métis Elders, Mere and Ajean, who steep her in medicine.
Carrying a ground-up salt bone for protection, Joan ventures into the Empire of Wild to slay the rogarou who’s killed Mere. And she’s determined to reclaim her husband from the creature.
Joan’s sidekick and protector is her chubby, bespectacled, twelve-year-old nephew, Zeus. This young sweetheart believes his Aunt Joan is his soulmate because he makes her happy. Zeus is always there for Joan even as she’s sponging her grandmother’s blood off the rocks. And when she leaves Mere’s trailer taking only a deck of playing cards tied with red ribbon, a bundle of sage, and her Swiss Army knife, Zeus joins Joan in her mission to bring Victor home.
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Like her hero, Cherie Dimaline is brave and fearless, pouring history, politics, and religion into her cauldron, then stirring with a branch of magic realism and terror. This is an Indigenous story told by an Indigenous storyteller. Close relationships bonded by blood, work, and land. Family. Sweetgrass. Tobacco smoke. Cherie Dimaline is from the Georgian Bay Metis Community in Ontario where this story is set. It’s evident in the bones, pores, and flesh of the landscape, and in the wildly beating hearts of the people whose territory the rogarou stalks.
After a jaw-clenching climax full of surprises, we’re left with a non-traditional but hopeful epilogue. You’ll have to read it to find out what that means. Mind: you may never go out in the woods again.
I’m reading this Tuesday, February 11 at Port Moody Library with six other authors. All contributed to the Port Moody Library’s White Pines Program which features local writers.
This free event is being held from 7pm – 8:30pm in the comfy Fireside room. Come and join us for a lovely, lively, literary evening.
WRITERS IN OUR MIDST#14 — Writer’s Biographies
Leesa Hanna is a writer and artist living in Port Moody, British Columbia. She has had poetry published by the online magazine, ‘the Story Quilt’. She has recently completed writing and illustrating her first children’s chapter book, The BIG Adventures of Little O – A Song for the Salmon. This book was longlisted for the CANSCAIP (Canadian Society of Children’s Authors, Illustrators and Performers.) Writing for Children Competition 2019. It is also included in the White Pines Collection at the Port Moody Library. Visit her website at www.leesahanna.com
Writing from the burbs of Vancouver, Lesley Evans Ogden, specializes in stories about ecology, conservation, animal behaviour, and freelancing. She also explores the intersection of science, human rights, and policy. She crossed a bridge from scientist to writer after a PhD (SFU) and postdoctoral research (UBC) on shorebird and songbird ecology. Her work appears internationally at places like Natural History, National Geographic, BioScience, BBC Future, New Scientist, and on CBC’s The Nature of Things. Find her at lesleyevansogden.com and on Twitter @ljevanso.
Jim Peacock, author of Remember the Good Times, published in 2019, resided for more than 50 years in Port Moody. He had a 15-year journalism career and more years than that in the practice of public and media relations and communications consulting. An active volunteer, he is a past president of the Port Moody Foundation, The Glenayre Community Association and the Variety Club of British Columbia, He has been a long-time supporter of the Eagle Ridge Hospital Foundation. His book is a memoir.
Shannon Matter is a singer/songwriter, writer and aromatherapist. She lives in Coquitlam and performs her original music around the lower mainland often. She has four music compilations to her credit, a DVD, a documentary of her music, five books and more albums and books to come! Visit her website at www.shannonmatter.com
Gerry Bradley was born and raised on Prince Edward Island. He spent thirty-four years working in community mental health in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and is now recently retired. He lives in Port Moody with his wife, Sasha, and their dog, Roxy. When not cutting the grass or washing the car or trying to write, he plays the fiddle with an Irish band called Port na Gael–see @portnagael on Facebook.
In 1989, Gregory J. Robb began his odyssey to publish half a million words in online and traditional periodicals before fearlessly engaging the longer book form. His inaugural book, Transience: From Failure to Future in a Scarred Family, was published in 2015; his second book is currently in the final stages of production. Greg continues to pursue the greatest story of all from his beloved home of Vancouver, Canada.
W. L. Hawkin writes “edgy urban fantasy with a twist of murder.” Described as “intoxicating, lush, magically-edgy, page-turners,” her Hollystone Mysteries follow a coven of witches who solve murders. An Indie publisher with Blue Haven Press, Wendy is also a poet and reviewer with a background in literature and Indigenous Studies. She’s thrilled to have her books available locally in metaphysical stores and in the White Pines Collection at the Port Moody Library. Visit Wendy at http://bluehavenpress.com
This cozy British mystery is Book Eleven in the Ruth Galloway series. I’ve read them all and always look forward to the next. This was better than most as it hearkens back to the very first Ruth Galloway mystery—The Crossing Places.
Back in England, after their Italy misadventure, Nelson is awaiting the birth of the mystery baby—might be his, might not—as are we. After all, Michelle’s shocking pregnancy is what blew up Nelson and Ruth’s plans to get together at the end of the last book. Like us, Ruth thinks they might never get together. She’s back teaching at the University of North Norfolk and dating Frank. Sort of. Her heart’s not in it. Precocious Kate is now seven years old and it’s comforting to see Ginger Flint curled up in her bed.
In this story, DCI Nelson and his King’s Lynn team solve a thirty-year-old
cold case—the tragic disappearance of a twelve-year-old girl. Margaret Lacey
had last been seen at a street party celebrating Charles and Diana’s wedding in
July 1981. Now her remains turn up at one of Ruth’s archaeological digs on the
Salt Marsh, near a cist containing the bones of a sixteen-year-old Bronze Age
girl. One ancient, one contemporary, the girls’ remains bring Ruth and Nelson
back together.
They both receive cryptic letters in the beginning of this story that are reminiscent of those written by Erik Anderssen, Ruth’s Norwegian professor and mentor who drowned in the Salt Marshes. But, if Erik’s dead, who’s writing letters that harken back twenty years to the disappearance of Lucy Downey (Book One) when this all began? The thing is, I read this book carefully and took notes and I still don’t know for certain who wrote those letters. It seems a stone left unturned. I have a suspicion, but it wasn’t made clear enough, for me at least. If you saw a line written somewhere, please quote it in the comments. I hate missing things like that.
This book introduces us to a new character, a sort of sexy Alex Skarsgaard. Think True Blood, Season One. Leif Anderssen turns out to be Erik’s son. Like his father, he’s suave and handsome, a lady’s man and a little scary—a salty blond herring in this archaeological soup. An old friend of Cathbad’s, Leif is also a love interest for Laura, one of Nelson’s daughters.
While Nelson’s team are trying to solve Margaret Lacey’s
cold case, an elderly hoarder is murdered, a man suspected in her
disappearance. And to complicate things, a twenty-four-day old baby is stolen
from her cot. Margaret Lacey’s niece.
Yes, Elly Griffiths knows how to complicate a mystery with a cast of eccentric relatives and neighbours, who all have their own agendas. It’s all quite incestual. At one point, Nelson’s daughter Laura is living with Leif, who she met at Cathbad’s meditation class. The roots on this mind-map furl out like Yggdrasil. Also, in this book, Nelson finally comes clean with his daughters and admits that seven-year-old Katie (Ruth’s kid) is actually his.
I’m a little disappointed that Cathbad has lost some of his druidic charm in this story. He’s more stay-at-home dad than druid, which is sad because that’s his lure. His wife, DS Judy Johnson has stepped up, though, and seems to be Nelson’s right hand, though Tanya and Cloughie are still part of the team.
The climax isn’t quite as thrilling as some of the Ruth Galloway mysteries that gallop on suspensefully for pages and pages. And the reveal of John Mostyn’s murderer is a little too quick and matter-of-fact. What? Really? The newborn baby who disappeared and the twelve-year-old girl murdered twenty years in the past seem to take precedence over this poor elderly man who loved stones and was shot in the head. I feel bad for him.
And in the end, we’re left, not so much with a cliff-hanger, but with the tide going out again on Ruth and Nelson. We’ll have to wait and see if a full moon can draw it back into the Salt Marsh once again.
When you come across a good website, it’s best to save it somehow. I was in search of a word — that term that explains when an arrow is placed on the bowstring ready for flight. It’s called nocking.
What Kaitlin says here is very important. If you’re writing about something you don’t know much about, you must defer to the experts. Use the right terminology, watch some videos to get a feel, and if you have the opportunity try it yourself. Nothing beats personal experience, but articles like this are helpful.
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