The Mercies – Kiran Millwood Hargrave

It is Christmas Eve 1617, and the fishing fleet is in sight of land when the storm strikes the Barents Sea off the north coast of Norway. The women at Vardo look on in horror as the boats are dashed and sunk with no survivors. Maren has lost her father, brother, and fiancé. It is the same story for all. The only males left alive at Vardo are old men and babes in arms.

Help is slow in coming to the isolated community. Meantime, the women, led by the capable Kirsten, must take on the men’s work – putting out to fish and tending the livestock and meagre crops. Only when the ground thaws are men sent to help bury the washed up dead and go, leaving only a pastor behind.

Two camps form. Those who are content to rely on the pastor’s fine words and faith that God will provide, cluster around Toril. Those like Maren whose faith is shaken by the obliteration of their menfolk, prefer to rely on their own efforts, taking their lead from Kirsten.

But this is not a good time to stand apart from the church. A decree from King Christian IV demands that sorcery and devil worship be rooted out and its followers incinerated. And the northern lands, where the indigenous Sami people still roam, is suspect. A commissioner is to be sent.

Absalom Cornet arrives, a bible thumping bully. With him is his new wife, Ursula, a shipowner’s daughter picked up in Bergen and broken in on the voyage north. Her change in situation is a shock to her, Maren is drawn in to provide emotional and practical support.

The uneven struggle for power in Vardo plays out horribly. The prose is sparing, totally suited to the bleak setting, harsh climate, and desperate circumstances.

Read and enjoy, or at least appreciate.

Demon Copperhead – Barbara Kingsolver

This is not so much a retelling or updating of the Dickens epic, more an echo or parallel. Demon narrates his life story from birth to early adulthood spent in rural Kentucky. His circumstances begin badly and rapidly worsen with a few bright spots that turn out to be false dawns. As ever, it’s the hope that kills.

The style of the first person narration reflects the upbringing of young Demon, who is intelligent but streetwise rather than educated. So the prose doesn’t exactly flow, peppered with US slang and adolescent whining – authentic but not easy on the eye. This wears off both as Demon matures and the reader attunes.

The backdrop to the story is increasingly the US opioid epidemic that affected the cash-poor communities Demon moves in, experiencing first-hand the devastating effects on lives.

As for the paralleling, it is not heavy handed. Names are cleverly echoed, and the female characters are given more prominence and feistiness. Inevitably, to those familiar with the original, the plot holds no surprises, though climactic events remain tense and moving.

A curiosity worth the 600 page investment? The jury is out.