An Author who actually knows how to write moral fiction; this novel is a true work of art. Kennedy does a superb job of visually illustrating the characters, setting, and story with her rich prose, and she clearly defines the moral standards that she presents, and shows such artistically through the actions and words of the characters in the book. This isn’t simply pulp story telling, it is not soap opera or mindless videogame-like action sequences. She chooses to take on strong themes of sexual orientation, societal repression of the same, and she essentially delivers a broad side attack on organized Christian religion. For readers who wish to avoid these themes, she does preface the book with a warning that it contains strong triggering themes including various strong sexual themes, homophobia, abortion, murder, and others; and of course, anyone offended by such content may simply choose not to read the book.
Fiction as art - that is, representation of moral concepts and value judgments in concrete form to communicate these ideas to others. Fiction is readily identifiable as “art” when the author’s ideas and value judgments hit home. This is the difference between stories merely meant to entertain, and literature that makes you think and feel and understand the moral judgments presented. The characters are highly idealized and may even be “stereotypical,” so to speak, to clearly illustrate and contrast the moral ideas being presented. And this is the case, even if the reader has a different moral standard than that of the author and may disagree with the concepts and standards illustrated in the artwork, in this case a novel. If the novel is really successful, aside from bringing creative satisfaction to the author in the first place, it may have the effect on the reader of increasing the reader’s understanding and comprehension of the moral concepts being illustrated in the story.
In this novel, love and sex between same sex individuals is sharply contrasted with heterosexual male-female relationships. Love between same sex female couples, the two strongest female lead protagonists and their partners, is loving, tender, and positive. Two minor protagonist males of different races have a similar loving, tender, and happy relationship. Every heterosexual encounter is presented as harsh, angry, or rushed and insensitive. A heterosexual father is a child molester. Another male is misogynistic and basically a rapist. The contrast between LG vs heterosexual relationships could not be more forceful or obvious. This is not a fault of the story; it is precisely the point of moral fiction, meant to clearly represent a particular point of view.
The spiritual/religious themes I thought were not quite as clear and even a little muddled. If we view the strong lead “witches” similar to those of 20th century Wiccan spiritual/religious and magical practices, and the number one antagonist as an old world demon that takes advantage of the gullibility and anti-witchcraft traditions and fears of every day churchgoing and bible-believing people, the story comes together and makes sense as presented. The demon/incubus does have some parallels in non-Christian religions and spiritualities, but artistically is presented more typically as an anti-Christian archetype that has been described as such in the 1400-1800 writings and practices of organized Christian religions and referenced in the witch hunts and paranoias of the time.
Artistically the difficulty I have with this is that the so-called pagan religions of the time did not believe in a Christian god, devil, or demons; they had their own good and not-so-good gods and other powerful beings. Some of these had parallels to the Incubus, so I would have preferred to see a more prototypical evil being from one of these “pagan” spiritualities rather than one that looks decidedly anti-Christian. During the witch hunts of the era, the accused in most case were innocents, falsely accused, and most of them were not anti-Christ or Diabolists and they were not in league with a devil or demons; most of the non-Christian religions of the day and most Wiccan practitioners of today, albeit with some exceptions, would not accept these types of demons, as described in Christian and anti-Christian religions, as real.
The Christian pastor in the story receives light treatment, cast in a negative light but otherwise not a lot of detail. He is similarly lightly dispensed with later in the book to allow the demon/fake minister to take his place unopposed as the spiritual leader of the community. The people of the town are mostly presented as an ignorant rabble, again this is for artistic purposes meant to draw the sharpest contrast between the moral positions. Although organized Christian religion isn’t directly attacked, it is generally presented in a negative light, in that there is nothing positive about it presented anywhere in this story.
The story itself is evenly paced, very well written, dramatic, and mostly predictable; there are a couple of reveals late in the story that may or may not be expected. With all the programmatic stories out there today, along with “non-stop action” novels with a hundred short chapters and the movie script in mind, this novel is a welcome departure and stands out from the field.
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Story is told in three timelines, 50 years apart, through the eyes and stories of three related (or are the related?) women. The story is a bit creepy, it’s full of family love, has a witch and a demon, is kind of historical, and a bit creepy (did I already mention creepy?). Entertaining and emotionally charged.
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