Cherie Dimaline's novel VenCo features witches and a wild road trip across America — read an excerpt now
CBC Books | Posted: October 28, 2022 3:04 PM | Last Updated: October 28, 2022
VenCo by Cherie Dimaline will be published on Feb. 7, 2023
VenCo is the latest book from Métis author and editor Cherie Dimaline, best known for the YA novel The Marrow Thieves, currently the No.1 Canadian kids book this week.
Dimaline's new work is a subversive and imaginative adult novel about a coven of modern-day witches.
The book's protagonist, Lucky St. James, finds herself down on her luck when she and her grandmother Stella are set to be evicted from their apartment. One night, doing laundry in the building's basement, Lucky finds a tarnished silver spoon that features an illustration of a witch over letters that spell out S-A-L-E-M.
This alerts Lucky to Meena, someone who is part of VenCo, an international headhunting firm that seeks out exceptional women. An adventure unfolds involving secret witches, witch hunters, magic spoons and an epic road trip from Toronto, to Salem, through Appalachia and into New Orleans.
Dimaline is a Métis author and editor. Her other books include Red Rooms, The Girl Who Grew a Galaxy, A Gentle Habit and Empire of Wild. The Marrow Thieves was named one of Time magazine's top 100 YA novels of all time.
The Marrow Thieves was defended by Jully Black on Canada Reads 2018. The Marrow Thieves also won the Governor General's Literary Award for Young people's literature — text and the Kirkus Prize for young readers' literature.
The sequel to The Marrow Thieves, Hunting by Stars, was published in 2021 and was shortlisted for best YA book by the 2022 Crime Writers of Canada Awards.
Dimaline told CBC Books that VenCo was inspired by current events and her thinking about what it means to feel connected in today's world — and the "magical" power that lies within all of us.
"I asked myself, 'What would happen if we really leaned into connection? If we really understood that we are inherently magical beings with amnesia?'
"And I came to one of history's greatest scapegoats — the witch," said Dimaline via email.
"I needed to show that there is magic in the common, so I wanted my witches to covet something ordinary. I decided on those old souvenir spoons everybody's auntie had hanging on their wall. I checked to see when the souvenir spoon collecting craze began and found out that the first spoon for the mass market in North America was, in fact, the Salem Witch Spoon. (Thanks, universe.) And it grew from there."
"This is a book about how we all have a wardrobe leading to Narnia — we just need to find it."
VenCo will be published on Feb. 7, 2023. You can read an excerpt below.
Meena was in a garden. It wasn't full of evergreens and vines like her own backyard but sliced through with bright birch and crowded with white trilliums.
The air was heavy with leaves and the smell of soil. She wore a long pink dress with tight sheer sleeves that ended in the middle of her palms, and a high lace collar. She was a stroke of oil paint on a watercolour canvas. She closed her eyes and listened.
Crickets, gathered in a symphony.
Frogs chirping through the hiccupping of a nearby creek.
A low hum of movement like pressure against the landscape.
That was the sound she followed.
She tried not to crush the flowers, but there were too many of them. They felt like velvet under her bare feet. Here and there a cluster of mushrooms bloomed like fat fingers, reminding her of how her wife found her spoon. She smiled. She liked the way memories followed her into dreams, especially when they were ones of Wendy. She had to push her arms ahead to carve a path through the birch.
She was amused by this. You never knew what the dream would demand. Apparently, in Lucky's dreams, she had slowed time so that movement had to be forced.
Through the trees was a clearing carpeted with violets like small eyes that squinted at her approach. There was Lucky, with her back to Meena, engaged in a conversation with someone mostly hidden by the billows of Lucky's massive gown, deep oxblood red and layered like a delicate pastry.
You never knew what the dream would demand. Apparently, in Lucky's dreams, she had slowed time so that movement had to be forced.
Meena paused to eavesdrop.
"I feel like I'm drowning," Lucky said, "like the world is so much heavier than me."
Meena couldn't make out the response, but something about the purring lilt of the other person's voice told her it was feminine.
"Which way am I supposed to go?" Lucky lifted her arms and pointed in opposite directions. "I'm stuck." She dropped her arms and lifted the hem of her gown, and, sure enough, she was rooted in the ground — a couture tree in a haunted forest.
She flexed her knees and pushed up, but her feet stayed fast.
More purring.
"I am trying!" Lucky squatted and tried to jump, but the soil would not let go. She screamed, "I do want it! I know I have to go."
A murder of crows, the biggest grouping Meena had ever seen, swirled into the sky. And whoever had been counselling Lucky was gone.
"No, wait! I'm sorry! Come back! Mom!" Lucky was yanking at her feet, trying to tear them free, the kind of violent movement that meant she was tossing around in her bed. Meena had to move now, before the girl woke herself up.
She took a step onto the flower carpet. Somehow the violets were sharp and stuck into the soles of her bare feet. Nice! Such protection was a witch move if she'd ever seen one. She reminded herself that her feet weren't really being cut, that the pain was only an illusion. But it was a good one — the next step hurt just as much.
This girl was powerful.
"Lucky," she called.
The girl twisted as best she could to look Meena's way, shocked to see a stranger in her dream.
A murder of crows, the biggest grouping Meena had ever seen, swirled into the sky. And whoever had been counselling Lucky was gone.
The violets were growing, tangling in Meena's toes and cutting the thin webs of skin between them. "Dig! You need to dig."
Meena could feel herself fading. She was actually being kicked out of Lucky's dream.
"How? With what?" Lucky shouted back, frantic.
"You have it with you. It's always with you now." Meena reached into her sleeve and pulled out her own spoon, holding it up in a hand that was almost transparent now. She could feel the soft give of her pillow under her head.
Lucky reached into her voluminous skirts and pulled out her spoon.
"Just dig. And then come home," Meena said out loud, into the dark of her own bedroom. She sat up, sucking air between her teeth. She had pins and needles up to her waist. Gently rubbing her legs, willing the blood to move, she breathed out.
"Holy f--k, who is this girl?"
Lucky woke up, sweaty and tangled in her sheets. In her right hand, she was clutching her little silver spoon.
Adapted from VenCo by Cherie Dimaline. Copyright © 2023 Cherie Dimaline. Published by Random House Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.
Corrections:- This post has been updated to reflect that The Marrow Thieves is not currently being adapted for television. October 28, 2022 3:51 PM