September 29, 2022

Magickal mystery arrives in time for Halloween

Part murder mystery, part psychological thriller, with a heavy dose of magical realism, “River Woman, River Demon” by Jennifer Givhan is an entertaining page-turner ahead of Halloween.

Eva, Chicana/indigenous artist and mother of two, lives on a dusty ranch near Albuquerque with her college professor/magickian husband, Jericho. Eva is also a practitioner of brujería and curanderisma.

Just a couple of weeks before Halloween, or Hallows as Eva and Jericho call it, Eva is drowsing at her kitchen table when she awakens to a woman’s screams coming from the direction of the river. She runs barefoot across the scrubby grasses, cactus, and rocks to find Jericho in the water with their friend Cecilia. Cecilia is beaten bloody and drowned.

Cecilia’s blood is found both in her car and Jericho’s, and the police find intimate photos of Cecilia in the glovebox of Jericho’s car. Eva, still traumatized by the drowning death of her best childhood friend, Karma, is now re-traumatized by both Cecilia’s murder and her husband’s betrayal.

Where before she was haunted just by Karma’s memory and her fragmented recollections of her death, Eva is now also haunted by Cecilia, sometimes in the form of an owl. And someone—or something—is cursing her with unexplained bruises, statues running blood, fainting, and paralysis.

Then suddenly, people from Eva’s past begin appearing. First the boyfriend that abandoned her in San Diego shows up at Cecilia’s funeral. He and Eva rekindle their relationship. Then the girl, now woman, that had accused Eva of drowning Karma arrives at Eva’s house offering to help her. Although Karma’s death was eventually ruled an accident, Eva had come under suspicion because of the girl’s accusations.

Not knowing who she can trust, Eva has to rely on herself and her magick to make sense of the tragic events of her life and keep herself and her children from danger.

Although Cecilia’s murder and the climax of the story are the only parts of intense action, the author uses short chapters to keep the story from dragging, even the passages that are just Eva dreaming or talking with her sister.

Eva’s memory gaps and fainting spells make her a somewhat unreliable narrator, suggesting to the reader, and to Eva herself, that perhaps she is responsible for the deaths of her two friends. The suspense builds even further at the end when the reader realizes before Eva who the killer is.

“River Woman, River Demon” releases Oct. 4, just in time for Hallows. It is a fun, quick read that will entertain and intrigue.

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