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"A mystery and a horror story about grief, but one with defiant hope in its beating heart." —Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Pallbearers Club
When Mackenzie wakes up with a severed crow's head in her hands, she panics. Only moments earlier she had been fending off masses of birds in a snow-covered forest. In bed, when she blinks, the head disappears.
Night after night, Mackenzie’s dreams return her to a memory from before her sister Sabrina’s untimely death: a weekend at the family’s lakefront campsite, long obscured by a fog of guilt. But when the waking world starts closing in, too—a murder of crows stalks her every move around the city, she wakes up from a dream of drowning throwing up water, and gets threatening text messages from someone claiming to be Sabrina—Mackenzie knows this is more than she can handle alone.
Traveling north to her rural hometown in Alberta, she finds her family still steeped in the same grief that she ran away to Vancouver to escape. They welcome her back, but their shaky reunion only seems to intensify her dreams—and make them more dangerous.
What really happened that night at the lake, and what did it have to do with Sabrina’s death? Only a bad Cree would put their family at risk, but what if whatever has been calling Mackenzie home was already inside?
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Höfundar
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Útgefandi
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Verðlaun
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Útgáfudagur
10. janúar 2023 -
Snið
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OverDrive Listen-hljóðbók
- ISBN: 9780593628157
- Skráarstærð: 237268 KB
- Tími: 08:14:18
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Tungumál
- Enska
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Umsagnir
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Starred review from November 7, 2022
Johns combines domestic realism and horror in her haunting debut, the story of a young Cree woman who’s distraught over the death of her sister. Mackenzie has fled from her home in northern Alberta to Vancouver, but the chilling dreams she’d hoped to escape follow her. Feeling increasingly threatened, she returns home, where her sister Sabrina died of a brain aneurysm shortly after their beloved grandmother died. There, she is reunited with Sabrina’s twin, Tracey, and their cousin Kassidy, as well as her mother and her aunties, and gradually discovers that they all have dreams that affect their waking lives in some way. As well, her recurring dream of drowning prompts Mackenzie to recall a summer day when Sabrina emerged from the woods looking glassy-eyed and somehow damaged, but she never learned what happened. Now, with Mackenzie’s dreams intensifying, the cousins conclude she must have encountered a “wheetigo,” a dangerous spirit, and they set out to destroy it before it comes for them. The novel serves as a window into a world where dreams intersect with waking reality, and where that unseen dimension is as much a part of the life of a tight-knit family and community as bingo, jokes, and video games. It works equally well as spine-tingling thriller and a touching meditation on grief. -
Tanis Parenteau leaps right into narrating this chilling debut horror novel. Mackenzie wakes from a vivid nightmare with a crow's head clutched in her hand. It's the latest in a series of all-too-real dreams. Parenteau conveys all of Mackenzie's anxiety, quickening her pace as the nightmares turn more sinister--and she's stalked by crows. She lives a solitary life far from her Cree family's home in northern Alberta and hasn't returned since her grandmother died, not even for her sister's funeral. When she finally travels home, Mackenzie feels isolated, but each loving relative comes alive through Parenteau's textured voice, rich characterizations, and skill with the Cree language. The suspense mounts as Mackenzie and her family share secrets, racing to discover the deadly source of the nightmares. E.E.C. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine -
June 10, 2024
Mackenzie thinks of herself as a "bad Cree." She left her family in rural Alberta, Canada, stifled by their grief after the loss of her grandmother. A few years later, her sister Sabrina suddenly and tragically dies. Mackenzie does not return home for her funeral, and the guilt weighs heavily on her. She begins having recurring nightmares about Sabrina and being unable to save her. When she wakes, holding items from her dreams, including a crow's bloody head, she knows there must be more to these dreams than she first thought. Johns's supernatural debut combines Indigenous folklore with themes of family, grief, and healing, all set in a community whose land is scarred by the oil industry's greed. Actor, producer, and narrator Tanis Parenteau, a member of the M�tis Nation of Alberta (Cree), communicates Mackenzie's varied emotions and provides distinct voices for multiple characters. Her performance imbues the conversations with the feel of an audio drama. Parenteau's facility with the Cree language makes this a must-listen. VERDICT Johns is an exciting new Indigenous voice in the horror genre. Readers who enjoyed Stephen Graham Jones's The Only Good Indians and Erika Wurth's White Horse will not want to miss this.--Meghan Bouffard
Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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