READ IN FORMAT THAT LETS YOU SEE COLOR ILLUSTRATIONS! For the author’s sake, because she deserves actual readers of the print book. I have been trying to figure out how to share my love of this novel since I read it in March 2023. It’s hard to describe. First: Get the print version or read it on a device that permits you to see the illustrations in color. The illustrations are gorgeous and integral to enjoyment of this unique and fanciful story. Second: Do NOT skip reading the “Dramatic Personae” in the early pages, because Lena, our first person narrator, jumps all over creation as she tells the story of her life, her mother’s life and her grandmother’s life as outcasts/magical/respected people of the town. Plus, you get oriented to this wild ride if you read them, e.g., the focus of Lena’s yearning, her mother: “Marietta Abernathy: my mother. She/her(s). Daughter of Ursa, the Hunter. Curator of the Paper Moon Menagerie. The One Who Drowned and Came Back.” With a footnote, very common in the book but it’s a good thing, promise. This one reads, “My mother had many names. For a complete list, see p. 13.” The list on page 13 then includes, “The Loon Woman,” “The town Hydratic; the One Who Could Not Contain her Tides: the One Whose Hair was Perpetually Tangled and Speckled with Ash” and the”One Whose Eyes Changed Color with the Seasons.”
This story is Lena’s investigation of what happened “20 June 1999” and all that came after. Her saga takes place at a time Marietta has disappeared in December 2016. Lena describes her sources as “found objects, excerpts of journals, letters, interviews and public records…..” Each chapter starts with her latitude and longitude. She explains to us how to read her investigative journal. Read that too! It explains up front what we are about to explore. And so we open with a letter Marietta wrote on the first of December and a chapter titled “Beau Calais & the Inland Sea.” This introduces us to Lena’s, Marietta’s and Patrick’s home on an island on the Inland Sea in the North Country. To the South is Ruin Lake. Straight west is the town of Beau Caelais.
This book is about a company town and the dangers of challenging the Mesabi Mine Co. It is about the environmental damage the mine caused to the waters. It is about Marietta inviting people to send her damaged and living or dead items impacted by the destroyed waters. And her taking them beneath. It is about Ursa, who died giving birth to Marietta out in the cold, alone and how that changed everything. It is about violence against women. It is about redemption for all the women and children ever murdered in the town and forgotten. and about Marietta, living but hurt. It is about the women beneath. It is magical realism at its best, with Marietta living between two worlds, drawn more to safety beneath but also to her daughter, decidedly on land. It is a mystery. The characters are all deeply drawn and compelling, even the bad guys, even the less damaged people, and, of course, the damaged people. This book is just compelling.
I listened to the audiobook first and kept thinking, ” I believe this might be a good book, BUT.” Whoever decided to issue this as an audiobook, other than for people who cannot read print books showed poor judgment at best. When read aloud, with nonlinear timeline dates and constantly different voices providing information and the location of the narrator expressed by longitude and latitude, it is by far the most confusing audio book I’ve ever listened too. I am forever grateful that I listened to my instincts and bought a copy to read and that I read it one day on my phone and discovered the illustrations were in beautiful color. I hope, sometime, people discover this incredible book. People like me who will think and think and think about the transformative writing and the people. Also the ghostly dogs and the women beneath. Be aware, this is not a book for people who cannot tolerate descriptions of violence against women, but it is well worth reading for those who can. It’s not so much graphic in these scenes as painful to the imagination. Because it’s so well written.
They Called me Bookworm 