“Words have power. Silence has power. Ain’t nothing we do that don’t have some sort of power over what comes next.”
Mal (2021) a 30 year old, black, podcaster from California, travels to her mother’s home province of Nova Scotia to investigate a ‘cold case’ for her podcast. She feels the need to unearth some evidence of the old crime as the perpetrators were never brought to justice. Mal’s podcast is about mental health, and this crime involves people who suffer from mental illness. Mal wants to determine the connection between a Nova Scotian community called Mercy Lake and a criminal group based in New York who have, for years, hidden under the name “The Sodality Group”. Sodality has taken an ancient religious men’s group and perverted it to become a sadistic, almost cult-like group who prey upon young girls.
“The Annapolis Valley isn’t a woke place, as you say, my darling. It’s sort of lost in time, and that’s not always a good thing, you know, a place where there is a lot of misremembering.”
Stella (age 12, 1980) – who has heterochromia and a very high IQ, lived her life up until now in Ohio. After a tragic car accident in which her mother perished and Stella herself suffered traumatic brain injury, Stella’s father brought her back to his childhood home in Nova Scotia. It is summer, and the grieving Stella meets up with a young local girl named Cynthia Seabury. Cynthia lives with her grandmother, Granny Scotia, in a grand old house. One day Stella witnesses something that she will never forget, and she will forever feel guilty for not speaking up about what she witnessed.
Stella (2021) is now in her fifties and living at the Jericho County Care Centre for people with brain injury and mental illness. Stella has not spoken since she was thirteen years old. Stella has one true and steadfast friend at the Jericho Centre, an elderly woman named Dianne.
Stella is in danger, and Dianne (and Mel) try to protect her. Stella is weaning herself off her many medications and is starting to regain some of her memories…
As a resident of Nova Scotia, I am well acquainted with this book’s settings. The western Annapolis Valley is a very picturesque locale, and the author did a fine job of description. The place names of Seabury, Mercy Lake, and Bigelow Bay were all inventions of the author, though some places like the North Mountain and the Bay of Fundy are real.
This was a slow paced, literary mystery with an unsettling, menacing vibe throughout. The prose was almost poetic in its stark beauty. With characters that are believable, the reader empathizes with them in a visceral way due to the fact that the author gives a voice to people who are marginalized by society.
There are several themes running throughout this novel, namely ageism, betrayal, trauma mental illness, female resilience, and crimes against women.
This is very much a feminist novel. The women are given centre stage and the men all seem to be either untrustworthy, threatening, or condescending.
This slow-paced novel does meander from its course on occasion, but overall it is a thought-provoking story of trauma, healing, and female friendship laced with some elements of conspiracy thriller. Recommended.
This review was written voluntarily and my rating was in no way influenced by the fact that I received a complimentary digital copy of this novel from House of Anansi Press via NetGalley. This title is from my extensive NetGalley backlist.
Publication date: August 3, 2021
Publisher: House of Anansi Press
ISBN: 9781487003401 ASIN: B08XSN2LD4 – 440 pages
Christy Ann Conlin’s debut novel, Heave, was a national bestseller and one of the Globe and Mail‘s top books of 2002. Her second adult novel, The Memento, was published by Doubleday in April 2016. Her first YA novella, Dead Time, was published by Annick Press in 2011. Her fiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Best Canadian Stories. She has a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of British Columbia where she wrote and studied fiction, stage and screenplay writing. She also holds a Bachelor of Education from Acadia University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre from the University of Ottawa. Her essays have appeared in numerous publications including Canadian Geographic, Geist and Chatelaine. Christy Ann is also a regular book reviewer for the Globe and Mail and is an online instructor with the University of Toronto. She lives in Wolfville, Nova Scotia.
Discover more from Fictionophile
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
