I fell in love with Brigid many years ago, long before I sipped from her sacred well in Ireland. Long before, trembling, I tied a rag on her prayer tree on the Hill of Tara and begged for help. Brigid is the ancient Celtic goddess of healing, poetry, and metal-crafting. She is my source of strength and inspiration.
First pilgrimage to Tara, Ireland
People venerated Brigid, as Mother Goddess for thousands of years. Much later, in the fifth century, an abbess took her name. Along with her nuns, this Brigid built a monastic settlement in Kildare, which means Church of the Oak. She prayed. She healed. She performed miracles. And in time, the people proclaimed her a saint. Brigid appears in my stories. Even lends her name to one of my major characters.
“And you are?”
“Dylan McBride.” He reluctantly shook the outstretched hand.
The tall, muscular priest was a good head taller and as he pumped Dylan’s arm, the veins in his neck stood out. “McBride. That means, follower of St. Bride. I wrote a paper once on Bride or Brigit, which is her other name. She’s the patron saint of Ireland.”
“Aye, she is. St. Brigit founded thirty convents in Ireland. Her flame burned in Kildare until her nuns were raped and driven out in the Twelfth century.” Dylan cleared his throat and spit sideways into the shrubs. “I’ve written papers too.”
Sunday, February 2nd is Brigid’s day. In the ancient pagan calendar, this marks the midpoint in the Dark Times between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox for those of us in the north.
Fifteen hundred years after her death, Brigid is still beloved in Kildare. Last year, her devotees marked her death anniversary, and Ireland proclaimed her the first Irish woman to be commemorated with an annual public holiday. Over centuries of strife, her bones had been scattered, but last year fragments were returned to St. Brigid’s Parish Church. If ever you visit Kildare, Solas Bhride is a Christian spirituality center led by the Brigidine Sisters who welcome “people of all faiths and of no faith.”
Brigid symbolizes the divine feminine, the beauty of art, the healing of the sick and injured, and veneration of the land, the trees, the animals, and all sentient beings. If you seek solace in this shifting world of shadows and feel fearful in these tenuous times, look to Brigid. Find a willing tree (always ask first) in a nearby wood and create your own Rag Tree. Tie a ribbon infused with your prayers upon her branches and ask for what you need. She helped me one day in Ireland when I felt all was lost, and she’ll help you too.
Author News
On February 25, I’m launching The Witch Killer. This series rebranding is an incredible journey I’m undertaking this year. Inspired by a talk given by thriller writer, Jonas Saul, on the island of Amorgos in Greece last September, I made the decision to change my pen name and re-release my books updated, reformatted, and re-covered, for a new audience. Of course, now that I’ve opened up to Estrada again, he’s started whispering about book six, which he wants to set in Greece.
It’s a heap of work, but the revitalizing of my books has given me new life. In many ways, I am my books. It’s inspired me artistically and creatively, and given me back my youth—or maybe that’s the Clinique kit I bought in the Black Friday sale. Hmmm …
Here’s a sneak peek at the new print cover for book 1 and a few links to my new self. Please follow me where you can. Alas, I’m a reborn author with few friends;)
Goodreads @183384153-harper-carr to read my latest reviews.
Actually, I listened to James Marsters (SPIKE of Buffy the Vampire/Angel fame) narrate Jim Butcher’s Stormfront, Book 1 of The Dresdan Files. Wow. I was hoping for Marster’s English accent but, alas, I’m impressed, both with his ability to portray Harry Dresden, a casual, demon-fighting American wizard who traverses Chicago’s streets and investigates strange murders, and with Butcher’s masterful writing style.
This is the 25th Anniversary of Stormfront. If you’ve never heard of it, do look it up, crime and urban fantasy fans. There’s a fanpage here but that’s kinda cheating. Dresden reminds me of someone I know intimately. Yep. That’s right.
The Dresden Files
I love how Butcher handles the whole question of technology—whether to use it or not. I hate writing technology, especially because it’s changing so fast it dates your work almost immediately. Although Butcher wrote Stormfront in the days of the VCR, he avoids this sinkhole by making Dresden’s wizarding aura interfere with technology. Harry Dresdan is old school, a brooding bad boy who’s awful good, shy around women, and an intelligent, masterful fighter. And bonus—there are seventeen audio volumes, all but one which have been narrated by James Marsters.
Oh, Lord. Sorry, Estrada. Did you say something? I’m listening to Harry.
I’ve been thinking for some time about starting a podcast called Travel by the Book. The premise is this: I (or one of my writer mates) travel somewhere, and I (or they) read fiction (preferably) or non-fiction (grudgingly) set in or near the travel destination, and the podcast then discusses not only the travel journey, but also the reading journey. Did we fall in love with the setting? How was the place different from the era in which the book was set? Did we notice social change, stunning architecture, a surplus of annoying tourists? How awesome was the food?
First: Amorgos. Why Did I Go?
A cruise of the Greek Islands has been on my bucket list for years, so how could I pass up a writing retreat on one of those iconic islands? Never mind that I’d just sold a house on Vancouver Island, bought a condo in the Vancouver burbs, and moved everything yet again. When I saw Jonas Saul’s Imagine Greece Retreats Facebook post, I was hooked.
“What do you think?” I asked my writer friend. We’d been talking about travelling together, perhaps even hosting our own writer’s retreats. “We should go,” she said. And so it began.
I’d met Jonas Saul in 2018 when he critiqued my first chapter at a Creative Ink blue pencil meeting, while Chris Humphreys, the featured author, lived on a nearby island in British Columbia and belonged to The Creative Academy, as did I. Knowing the presenters, however remotely, made it seem safe. And then there were the photos. Before we even left Canada, Jonas and his charming wife, Greek thriller writer Rania Stone, were answering questions and making us feel at home.
My trip from Vancouver to Toronto to Zurich and finally Athens was a nightmare I hope never to repeat and had nothing to do with them. Story here. Let’s just say, the last night I slept was Sunday in Vancouver, and I arrived at the hotel after midnight Wednesday after spending ten hours on a plane beside a coughing woman.
Athens is a dirty, gritty, glitzy, city, a hot and hectic hodgepodge—beatific faces of gods and heroes, dense clouds of cigarette smoke and diesel fumes, ancient ruins swathed in story and tourists, feeling ever lost and fearful, the sweetest tomatoes ever tasted (what’s with those tomatoes?), making wonderful new friends while searching for benign delicacies in a cluster of cafés, classic relics of an ancient world, sleepless nights where breathing seemed impossible … and then the sea, the port at Amorgos, a mountainous drive of switchbacks, and paradise. Lakki Village.
Lakki Village on Amorgos
I walked into my private room. The balcony doors were wide open, the curtains slow dancing in the salty breeze. After one deep breath, Athen’s smog disappeared. So revitalizing was the air, I left the doors open all night to absorb the golden waxing moon, and there, in the cool darkness, mosquitoes ate my face. These weren’t big loud Canadian mosquitoes. No, these were wee, sneaky, silent, buggers that left welts all over my cheeks, nose, shoulders, and neck. And I’d caught a virus while traveling—actually, it was Stella’s Australian cold pills that saw me through the worst of it.
Nevertheless. I dreamed and journaled.
Lakki Village is an oasis in a brown-hilled goat-herder’s world, its cliff-edges clustered with square white, cobalt-trimmed cottages. The sand beach is soft, the warm, salt waves fierce when they catch you unaware. The air is clean and today the wind is calm. Cats slide by or camp near our table, kneading the trees with soft paws, begging food. One morning I go for more juice and a swift black streak leaps up and steals ham from my plate. There are also dogs—one scary black Doberman mix and several adorable terriers, one of whom I want to stuff in my bag.
I went to every workshop—glorious tutorials held with a backdrop of turquoise Mediterranean Sea. In between, I dreamt of Jason and Odysseus sailing this whaleroad; searched in vain for goat cheese on this island of 25,000 goats; meditated with my muses; soaked up the sun and floated in the warm saltwater pool with new and wonderful friends (Stella!) and explored the nearby village, which I discovered on the final day sold the most incredible gluten free sourdough loaves and imported sheep cheese!
Second: How Amorgos Reminded Me I Love Writing
Each day, inspiration flew from the lips of our instructors—thriller writer Jonas Saul and fantasy/historical fiction author C.C. (Chris) Humphreys—and it landed with me. The first day, Jonas asked, “Why are you here?”
“I turned seventy this year. I either need to break through or give up,” I heard myself say.
Don’t get me wrong. Writing is my vocation. I can’t NOT write. But something was missing in the business of it all.
By the time the week ended, I had a plan. I’d decided on a new pen name to use with my two as yet unpublished Young Adult novels.
“An artist’s name must match their mission,” Jonas said. Indeed. I’d start with my two latest novels and, over time, I’d rebrand my ongoing urban fantasy Wicca thriller series. I spent an hour talking about my new works with Chris Humphreys, where I made changes to titles, synopsis, and the all-important first page. I’d pitch and pitch, and while I waited for that “YES,” I’d write and write.
I believed in me again and the thought made me tremble.
Chris talked “upticks” and “shout lines” and “comoca”— characters with objectives meet obstacles > creates action. Of course, we knew this, but there was something in Chris’s theatrical British voice that made it potent and noteworthy. Chris took us on a metaphorical journey up the mountain—three climbs, three drafts—and left us wanting more.
Other inspiration came from our motley band of International writers, who were some of the dearest people I’ve ever met. Most of us were introverts, our heads heavy with characters and stories, and though we met socially, we secretly longed for time alone to go deep and do what we do. Write and dream and write some more.
Third: What is Destination Reading and Why is it a Thing?
“It’s simple. Before you travel, read books (preferably fiction) written about the place you’re going and then see how it resonates with you.” Like Stella Quinn, My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell (sorry Stella, it’s Duh-RELL) has been a favourite of mine for years. This is a comfort book … a whisper, a giggle, a belly laugh. You can stop and start, put it down and pick it up. It’s a book you will keep on your shelves.
Set on the island of Corfu (1935-1939), it’s the memoir/autobiography of a boy and his free-spirited family. Big brother Laurence Durrell became a rather famous author and Gerry a notable biologist. Unfortunately, one cannot duplicate the experience of a fanatical child naturalist in the 1930s on a geographically different island. While Corfu seemed to be a jungle of exotic plants and creatures, Amorgos was more of a hilly desert studded with hairy goats and surrounded by sand beaches, polished stones, and the most perfect sea imaginable. But it was in Durrell’s book I first learned the “don’t flush toilet paper in Greece” rule. This little passage reveals Gerry’s sister’s reaction to the whole sordid scenario.
I studied Mythos by Stephen Fry. At least, I managed “Part One—The Beginning” mainly because of Fry’s comedic wit, so departed for Greece with hazy notions of the gods and their idiosyncrasies. I’m particularly intrigued by Athena, who will undoubtedly find her way into my sixth Wicca thriller. Anyone who can spring from a crack in her father’s head wearing armour and a plumed helmet while carrying a shield and spear, is a match for my free-spirited Latino magician and coven high priest.
One marble statue of Athena
I took a uni course on Greek Art in 2007, so reread the text, Greek Art by Cambridge journalist and lecturer, Nigel Spivey. This enchanting art history book surveys Greek culture through the ages. It’s a heavy white tome on shiny, thick, paper. Sculptures leap from the page and vivid polychrome images present the ruins as the ancient Greeks might have viewed them. Explore this example of how polychrome is bringing those ruined marbles back to life or watch this.
Speaking of love, this stunning young man caught my eye.
The youth Antinoos of Bithynia, in Asia Minor was the favourite of Emperor Hadrian. After he drowned in the river Nile in AD130, Hadrian had him deified and erected numerous statues, busts, and portraits of him in cities and sanctuaries throughout the Roman Empire AD130-138.
All you need is love …
Finally, I read, loved, and reviewed a Young Adult Romance called Love & Olives by Jenna Evans Welch. Seventeen-year-old Olive is invited to Santorini by her long lost father, an Atlantis-obsessed explorer, to help him make a documentary about his life. Liv meets Nico, a stunning Greek boy in Oia, and they take us on a tour of Santorini.
This book was part of the reason, I took a Sea Jet to Santorini (Thera) after the retreat ended. After all, it was only a half-inch away on the map. I was pathetically seasick on the one-and-a-half-hour journey through gusty seas, and burst into tears when I finally saw my name on a sign in the parking lot—an unromantic introduction to Santorini except for Alekos, the middle-aged transport driver, who tried to revive me by running his water-soaked hands over my face and hair while murmuring soft reassurances.
Though we didn’t make it to Oia, Fira offered fireworks on an inky backdrop, a pyrotechnic display of the erupting volcano that destroyed Minoan culture (1600-1500BCE), a delicious view of the sea-filled crater dotted with cruise ships and yachts, a fabulous café overlooking the sea, clifftop clusters of white-washed hotels, and a bazillion beatific churches. We did visit the eclectic Atlantis Bookstore featured in Love & Olives and saw many of Thera’s artifacts in Athens at the National Museum of Archaeology. I have enough Santorini vibes in my soul to recreate it in my next urban fantasy—in particular, I can envision my hot magician racing and leaping across the white stucco rooftops, perhaps in pursuit of Athena.
Fira, Santorini
Intrigued? Join an active Greek Retreat Facebook group or go to their website and imagine yourself in one of these fabulous photos. Perhaps you too will have a life-changing experience in Greece.
This is an incredible novel. Poetic. Prophetic. Powerful. I’m not even sure how it ended up on my Kindle; perhaps it was on a free books newsletter and I downloaded it based on the glorious front cover. I love watching jellyfish. They’ve always been my favourite tank at the Vancouver Aquarium. Of course, there they were captive jellyfish contained for our amusement and we, watching from the outside, felt safe.
Here, jellyfish are marauders and we are their amusement.
“The jellyfish rule the ocean now. With limited predators, warm oceans and over 700 million years of evolution, they’ve become sly at adapting to the elements.”
This impactful apocalyptic novel—the first in Jillian Webster’s The Forgotten Ones trilogy—begins in futuristic New Zealand, where the writer now lives. The book falls into that newish realm we call eco-fiction or eco-myth. The writing is poetic and literary; the plot, adventurous with enough romantic suspense to keep you up at night, and for those of us who love magic, Webster even adds a dash of the fantastical. Maia, the feisty twenty-year-old female protagonist, is something of a nature goddess. In this passage, reminiscent of the ancient Gaelic “Song of Amergin” Maia discovers her destiny and then must accept it, and wear it.
“You are the reincarnation of a living earth, long forsaken. You are her. You are the soul of the trees, the heartbeat of each crawling ant, the breath of every humming bee. You are the music of the babbling brook and the pulse of each undulating wave. You are the spotted clouds of deep red sunsets and every reflective crystal of white mountain tops. You are the delicate drop of rain and the crushing avalanche of ice.”
The tale begins with a prologue—a nightmare—in which a mother she cannot remember, beckons Maia to follow her destiny. This recurring dream precipitates Maia’s decision to leave the comfortable safety of the mountain haven her grandfather built for her, after he dies. Her choices? Live alone. Marry some old man from the North Island Community. Or follow her mother’s voice and set out to seek her destiny.
“Life as a whole tends to work like this; the most beautiful things in this world have been born from disaster.”
The philosophy is tribal. We’ve heard it before; yet we always forget. And the consequences of forgetting is a planet flooded due to melted poles, overrun with jellyfish. Powerless cities rot beneath the sea, and desperados run disparate communities. It can be triggering, given the state of Earth these days. Yet there is a glint of hope in this torpid sea of jellyfish. A rumoured Utopia —The Old Arctic Circle—The New World.
“Before The End, there was a lot of talk about this anomaly, this place on earth that for thousands of year had been covered in ice. A wasteland—no man’s land. Once the glaciers melted, there were these massive uninhabited pieces of earth at the very beginning stages of what they were like millions of years ago.”
Imagine it. A tropical paradise as yet pristine and unaffected by human greed. Wouldn’t you search for it? I would.
Be aware this book could trigger you. It will certainly make you think. When Maya dives off a pirated freighter into the sea off the west coast of California and lands in a wavering island of garbage, I almost stopped reading. It was too real, too much to dwell on. I know we’re dumping tons of plastic and garbage into the ocean daily. How long will it take before the garbage rises to the surface and becomes an island of nets, plastic, and death?
The best part for me was discovering that there is a book 2—The Burn of a Thousand Suns. I hope that people; at least, the “right” people hear the message Jillian Webster offers before it’s too late.
I recently reread Widdershins, the 11th book in Charles de Lint’s Newford series (published 2006). At 560 pages, it’s a hefty tome. I fell in love with it in chapter one when Lizzie Mahone’s car runs out of gas at a lonely crossroads in the middle of the night. Of course, you know when you’re stranded after midnight at a crossroads near an “enormous old elm tree, half dead by a lightning strike” that something extraordinary is going to happen. For Lizzie, it’s a savage attack by bogans, nasty-pants faeries with sewer-mouths whose evil plans include stealing her car.
Fortunately for Lizzie, Grey, one of the corbae (bird) cousins, arrives serendipitously and saves her. But the bogans have been hunting and left their kill in the trunk of her car. Lizzie can’t stand to see the butchered deer, so buries the pieces under the tree, then gets her fiddle and plays a lament to honour the deer’s spirit. This touching act draws the attention of Walks-With-Dreams AKA Walker, who we discover is the father of Anwatan, the butchered deer. To repay Lizzie for her kindness, Walker tells Lizzie to call on him if she’s ever in need. Well, it doesn’t take long before Lizzie’s in need.
I tell you this because the rest of this massive story plays off these different types of creatures—the humans (Lizzie and her friends), the Indigenous animal people, and the Settler faeries who invaded this land with the Europeans.
Politics is rampant and the plot and its connections complex. At its core is the conflict between the settler fae and the Indigenous animal people who call themselves cousins. A massive war is brewing, fueled by the vengeful Odawa, a cousin from the salmon clan who Grey accidentally blinded by pecking out his eyes one day. He thought Odawa was dead. Odawa betrays the animal people and joins up with the fae who refer to the Indigenous cousins disrespectfully as “Green Bree” or “pluikers.”
Meanwhile, triggered by Anwatan’s murder, Minisino and his buffalo soldiers rise up in solidarity to revenge past injustices inflicted on their ancestors by the settlers. This story is an anthropomorphic retelling of North American history. Even Lucius, the Raven who created the world, makes an appearance at the height of the conflict.
But it’s not all about faeries, transforming animals, and politics. At its heart is the ongoing love story between Jilly Coppercorn and Geordie Riddell begun in The Onion Girl (2001). Jilly’s story is dark. In order to heal and release the past horrors that are stuck deep in her subconscious to become whole, Jilly must face her childhood abuser. A lengthy piece of this book takes place within Jilly’s mind or as de Lint calls it her “heart home”. Lizzie ends up in there with her, and the pedophile who abused Jilly joins them, as horrific as he was back then. When Del turns them both back into little girls and magically makes Lizzie’s mouth disappear from her face, it seems hopeless.
As I said, this book is dark and deep, but ends with a glimmer of hope and understanding. Charles de Lint says,
“I’m a writer and this is what I do no matter what name we put to it. Year by year, the world is turning into a darker and stranger place than any of us could want. This is the only thing I do that has potential to shine a little further than my immediate surroundings. For me, each story is a little candle held up to the dark of night, trying to illuminate the hope for a better world where we all respect and care for each other.”
Along with light, Charles de Lint pours his musician’s soul into his characters. Lizzie and her cousin Siobhan play fiddle in a Celtic band. When Siobhan is pushed down the stairs by a vengeful bogan and sprains her arm, Geordie steps in to help. Reading this book inspired me to take up playing fiddle. I play piano and some guitar, but I’ve longed to fiddle all my life. Geordie says:
“Music needs to live and breathe; it’s only pure when it’s performed live with nothing hidden – neither its virtuosity nor the inevitable mistakes that come when you try to push it into some new, as yet unexplored place. It’s improvisational jazz. It’s the jam, the session. The best music is played on street corners and pubs, in kitchens, and on porches, in the backrooms of concert halls and in the corner of a field, behind the stage, at a music festival. It’s played for the joy and the sadness and the connection it makes between listeners and players.”
I get it. I’ve heard it. I want it.
Some people disparage fantasy just on principle. They don’t understand the scope and complexity of art that’s caught up by a label created by marketers. I love how Charles de Lint gets around that.
“I now call my work ‘mythic fiction,’ a term created with my friend, Terri Windling, when we were sitting around talking, trying to figure out what to call what we write. She is a wonderful writer, and her fiction travels along similar roads to what I do. MaryAnn often says that Terri and I were twins in a past life; we have a lot of the same sensibilities.
“We liked the term ‘mythic fiction,’ which fits perfectly. ‘Urban fantasy’ doesn’t work because a lot of what I do isn’t set in an urban setting. ‘Contemporary fantasy’ could work, but it’s kind of boring and doesn’t really say much. Besides, in 50 years you won’t be able to call my books ‘contemporary’ fantasy. ‘Mythic fiction’ works because it has broader resonances and alludes to the heart of this fiction, which is, of course, myth. It has the right tonality because these are stories that have modern sensibilities, dealing with contemporary people and issues, but they utilize the material of folklore, fairy tale, and myth to help illuminate that. It also omits the word ‘fantasy’ — a term for which people have too many preconceptions. I’m not trying to knock fantasy, because I love good fantasy and have had great support from the fantasy community throughout my career, which I very much appreciate. But I’m trying to engage an even broader audience — people who normally don’t read fantasy, who get scared by the word fantasy or by those types of covers. I think a lot of people who don’t like fantasy just haven’t had the chance to have the right book put in front of them.”
I agree completely. I also write mythic fiction. My books are rarely set in urban areas, so I’ve stopped saying I write “urban fantasy” although sometimes I still get stuck there as do all stories that are contemporary but venture into the realm of mythic creatures and the supernatural. My witches seek the wild places faeries frequent and dance under a mythic moon, so yes, it’s more mythic fiction than anything else.
The only thing I don’t understand about this book is the cover art. A church steeple and floating women? It’s a little too Practical Magic for me. Widdershins means to travel in a counterclockwise motion. Witches dance widdershins to unravel a spell or a circle they’ve cast. I understand what this means to the story. Jilly Coppercorn travels backward to unravel the spell cast over her mind by her abusive brother. She must untangle her future from her past. But the cover art? I think the artist never actually read the manuscript, and just went with what they knew about the word.
This book is so much more than its cover. So don’t let that scare you off. Venture into the mythic fiction of Charles de Lint. You’ll be captured by the first chapter. You might even get inspired to play the fiddle like Cape Breton legend, Natalie McMaster.
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.
cbc.ca
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.
