Uprooted by Naomi Novik
A pick from my Book Club, I had high hopes for this novel. We had read another book right before this one with a cursed forest and it wasn’t the best representation. So, Kathleen recommended this one.
It did not disappoint.
A short synopsis: A magical retake on the fairytale dragon, a kingdom at war and the living, cursed forest known for swallowing entire villages, a young, intern witch and a smidgen of romance.
For context, as ever-the-hopeless-romantic, I surprised myself with lack of romance. There are two great romantic scenes, but only two, and I didn’t even miss the rest of it. There was so much going on!
The story follows Agnieszka, a girl from a small village at the edge of the forest from where the Dragon chooses his human companion. She will work for him in his castle for a year before moving away to live a grand life. Agnieszka is a shy, awkward girl who is perfectly happy with her life in the village; her best friend, Kasia, raised to be the best of everything–the prime choice for the Dragon.
SPOILER: But when the Dragon comes, he doesn’t choose Kasia, but our nervous protagonist. Because Agnieszka is a witch, and the kingdom law demands he teaches her.
She is taken away to the Dragon’s Tower, but it’s a rocky process. She is fairly useless at anything other than finding things, and Agnieszka and the Dragon do not get along at all. Eventually, she is invited to the palace where the real war is revealed.
This is easily one of my favourite books. I knew by about page 25. The story is rich and alive, and it is such a fast read. There is so much story happening all at once, and the author roped it all together perfectly.
It also has a wonderful, subtle commentary about human wars–via the origins of the forest–the story of which you get allusions to throughout the novel and the actual telling in the last few chapters.
As easily the slowest reader you will ever meet, finishing this book in three weeks is a goddamn #WIN.
I was so proud of the world-building; you get sucked in. And I can promise you this, there are no lulls in this book.
Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate
(I am horrified to say I had no idea about this problem in our country until reading this book. I am equally horrified I never learned about it in school nor the internet.)
Here is a fictional retelling of a group of five siblings who got roped into the Tennessee Children’s Home Society.
For those who don’t know—I didn’t—the Tennesee Children’s Home Society was a children’s agency run by a woman named Georgia Tann during the first half of the 20th century. It advertised itself as an adoption agency, but it acted more like a human-trafficking ring to sell children from rough neighbourhoods to rich prospective parents all over the South.
Before We Were Yours is told via two first-person characters.
Rill is the oldest sister of the siblings stolen from their Mississippi River boat-home in 1929. We hear her story firsthand as it happens to her and her siblings.
Avery is a modern-day lawyer looking into her grandmother’s life after her dementia gets exceptionally bad.
Each chapter switches between Rill and Avery. You’d think it would get confusing, both being in first-person. But because there are nearly 100 years between either narrator, it’s actually really easy to keep them apart.
Personally, I found myself more interested in Rill’s chapters than Avery’s. I wanted to know what happened with the kids, because I love kids, and their lives were constantly sad and unknown, and I wanted to know they were okay!
However, very important things happen within Avery’s chapters, things you need to know for the next Rill chapter. Her chapters also became more interesting towards the middle of the book.
Even though several chapters were not the most interesting (or rather, there were other chapters I was dying to get to), I still consider this a favourite book.
To think that actual children in real-life history went through these exact situations, that children went missing without warning, that it was a rare day when siblings got placed into the same adoptive family, that children were illegally ripped from their birth families… I have no word other than barbaric for what happened to those children.
I hate that I never knew this was a problem. But I’m so glad I know now. The author, Lisa Wingate, has another book by the name of Before & After, which are the true stories and memoirs of survivors from the TCHS.
The Medicine Man by Sarah M. Anderson
(I’d never heard of Sarah M. Anderson before, despite her extensive library. She not only turned me into a fan but as soon as I finished this novel, I picked up another of hers, a cousin to this one.)
I found this while roaming the internet for a cross-culture romance novel. At the time, it was free through GoogleBooks (and at the time of this post, it is available here).
Because it was printed solely online, I wasn’t expecting much of anything. I figured it would be a good-enough read that could entertain me for a while. How wrong I was.
From the synopsis, I knew there were a Western surgeon and a native medicine man, and I knew they wouldn’t see eye-to-eye. I expected lots of back-and-forths and a slow-burn from antipathy to romance. From the Prologue, I knew this medicine man had visions of the future, and I knew Miss Hard-Science wouldn’t appreciate that.
As primarily a romance, I expected to cheer for the main man and the main woman, like them along the way as they overcame their own hurdles, and then celebrate them when they finally got it together.
The hurdles happened. I loved Madeline and Rebel both individually and together. And I came to appreciate both their (opposite) sides of their many medical arguments.
But Sarah M. Anderson really made this story into something so much more than that.
This novel is about the ensemble as much as the pair—and I’m not salty about it at all. I met and came to love all the different people on the reservation and became truly upset when those people started getting ill.
The relationship developed. I wouldn’t classify it as a slow-burn, but I would classify it as a natural, real-life fall. Their worlds were very different and they were strangers, but most of the time, they got on splendidly. I cannot recall if they ever actually “titled” their relationship; they just kind of were. Madeline (our all-science, all-the-time surgeon from Ohio) and Rebel (a Lakota medicine man in-training) are flirty and swooning and ‘out-flanking’ from the very beginning, and it’s great.
Despite the lack of predictable appearance of her ex (something I am not unhappy about), we know all we need to know about her ex and what kind of mindset we have to start with inside Madeline. She’s settled for not-really-good-enough for so long, and now she’s here to do a job that is in desperate need of doing but not at all what she expected, and Rebel Runs Fast is nothing like she’s ever seen. (*playing in my head*: ‘Like No Man I’ve Ever Seen’ song from the Tarzan soundtrack.)
Rebel is a Lakota man who never wanted to stay on the reservation, but after an excursion to the white man’s world that ended in heartbreak, he doesn’t really fit anywhere. He’s the one who takes care of everyone on the reservation, and he’s the source of most of the “education” I received during this read. However, he’s not entitled or snippy; he’s honest and patient with Madeline (and us other White folk) who just don’t know better.
I absolutely love him, and I adore them together.
From the moment I started this book—with a Prologue vision that includes an iced-over world, a white horse, and everyone he loves dead from a mysterious illness—I couldn’t put it down. The budding relationship is heated and human, and despite the looming illness from Rebel’s vision, the characters and their lives carry the story, not the epidemic. This book acts as a “slice-of-life” story, where instead of seeing this Hollywoodized version of a story, it’s like I was standing there with everyone experiencing it all with them.
It’s a wonderful story of finding where you belong.
And I have now excitedly begun Anderson’s third novel from the grouping about Nobody Bodine—yes, that’s his name. (I love their names.)—in hopes that he, too, finds a place to belong. (His teaser is at the end of The Medicine Man.)
I’ll leave the cause of the illness for you to read, but I think it’s brilliant. I’m ashamed to admit I, too, reacted like Madeline did, as an under-educated outsider to the history of the Lakota (and the truth of my own White-European heritage).
On that note, I think the COVID pandemic is a perfect time to read this book. Despite it being fiction, there is so much reality (and history) to it, and with #BlackLivesMatter going on, I think even those of us who are under-educated are in a prime mindset to hear its message.
Fast-paced and alive, like the others, The Medicine Man is a favourite and receives 5 Stars and lots of recommendations. (Please note: This book does include explicit sexual scenes—though less in number than one might expect.)
As a famous Native American rap artist, Frank Waln, put it: “Ours is a culture with a past, not of the past”. And I think that’s something we easily forget…
P.S. If you’re interested in Frank Waln’s quote, you can find the whole video here or here.