Cherie Dimaline

From the bestselling author of Empire of Wild, a wickedly subversive, deliciously imaginative, deeply feminist novel of contemporary witches on the rise--a book that only the supremely gifted storyteller Cherie Dimaline could write. Lucky St. James, orphaned daughter of a bad-ass Métis good-times girl, is barely hanging on to her nowhere life when she finds out that she and her grandmother, Stella, are about to be evicted from their apartment. Bad to worse in a heartbeat. Then one night, doing laundry in the building's dank basement, Lucky feels an irresistible something calling to her. Crawling through a hidden hole in the wall, she finds a tarnished silver spoon depicting a story-book hag over letters that spell out S-A-L-E-M. Which alerts Salem-born Meena Good, finder of a matching spoon, to Lucky's existence. One of the most powerful witches in North America, Meena has been called to bring together seven special witches and seven special spoons--infused with magic and scattered to the four directions more than a century ago--to form a magic circle that will restore women to their rightful power. Under the wing of the international headhunting firm VenCo, devoted to placing exceptional women in roles where they can influence business, politics and the arts, Meena has spent years searching out witches hiding in plain sight wherever women gather: suburban book clubs, Mommy & Me groups, temp agencies. Lucky and her spoon are number six. With only one more spoon to find, a very powerful adversary has Meena's coven in his sights--Jay Christos, a roguish and deadly witch-hunter as old as witchcraft itself. As the clock ticks toward a now-or-never deadline, Meena sends Lucky and her grandmother on a dangerous, sometimes hilarious, road trip through the United States in search of the seventh spoon. The trail leads them at last to the darkly magical city of New Orleans, where Lucky's final showdown with Jay Christos will determine whether the coven will be completed, ushering in a new beginning, or whether witches will be forced to remain forever underground.

VenCo

Suzie

Anxiety makes everything feel very big or very small, depending on which is more hurtful in the moment 

Lindsay

Witches were never capitalists. We were the thing that stood in the way of capitalism, which is just the engine of the patriarchy, after all.

Guilt has a way of showing up when it is least useful and settling in so that it’s hard to breathe.

Anxiety makes everything feel very big or very small, depending on which is more hurtful in the moment.

She made you who you are. Gave you magic. Gave you guts. Mothers are the witches we know best but never acknowledge.

Throughout history, witches have been the stand-ins for all people who have felt “outside” or “different.” I say, fuck it—go outside, be different, be so different they have to loosen their grip on the world because you are proof there is so much beyond them. Live fully, feel it all without apology, be weird and powerful and amazing. Because ultimately, that is who this book was written for—the wild witches that no man (and no system) could ever begin to contain.

 closing, I would like to remind you that it’s always a good day to hex the patriarchy.

VenCo quotes

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