CURE FOR DEATH BY LIGHTNING CL [Hardcover]

Gail Anderson-Dargatz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 4, 1996

Living on a frontier farm in 1941 western Canada, fifteen-year-old Beth, a sensitive, emotionally wounded young girl, copes with an abusive parent and conflicts over her sexuality as she struggles to come to terms with a harsh life and a sense of self-identity. A first novel.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The year is 1941. For the Weeks family on their frontier farm in Western Canada, life is brutally hard, with moments of joy few and far between. Fifteen-year-old Beth Weeks narrates this coming-of-age story, which is sprinkled with recipes, home remedies and useful homesteading advice (e.g., how to kill and clean a chicken: keep it calm, since "there's nothing as frustrating as trying to kill a panicked chicken"). Though the inventory of authentic period detail is evocative, make no mistake: this is no warmhearted tale of pioneer life. Forget square dances and barn raisings; think bestiality and incest. Beth's tortured, demanding father, mentally ill following a traumatic bear attack and the lingering effects of a head injury he received in WWI, goes on one rampage after another. Beth, meanwhile, does her best to fight off various sexual predators, finding solace of sorts in a tentative love affair with Nora, a troubled half-Indian girl. But Coyote, a sinister shape-changing spirit, stalks them and others, infusing the plot with a weird mystical aura at odds with the hardscrabble realism of the descriptions of day-to-day life. A dysfunctional Little House on the Prairie, this bleak, violent saga is a disturbing mixture of period minutiae and grim supernatural phenomena. (May) FYI: The Cure for Death by Lightning is based on a short story that won the Canadian Broadcasting Company's literary competition in 1993.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

YA?Beth Weeks turns 15 during the early 1940s, when most of the eligible men in rural British Columbia have enlisted. Her older brother remains to help with the farm and to protect her from their father, who received a head injury in World War I and is a violent and unpredictable man. Beth's mother talks aloud, regularly, with her own long-dead mother. Beth comes of age under great obstacles. Her mother refuses to believe her when she tells how other kids torment her, so she stops going to school. She is sexually innocent but instinctively fears her father, and when he rapes her, she withdraws, knowing she can say nothing to her mother. It is her friendship with Bertha Moses, a Native American, and her extended family that sustains her. The community is wrestling with several problems, and it is Bertha who explains that all the bad things that are happening are caused by Coyote, the notorious shape-shifter, who is present, though disguised, and wreaking havoc. The characters are brilliantly portrayed. The writing is spare and powerful: the rape scene is brief and wrenching; the loneliness of Beth and her mother is painful. The writing is wonderful, and the details are just right, but this book is not easy to read. Mature YAs who seek to challenge and stretch their minds will find this a memorable novel.?Judy Sokoll, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 294 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin; 1ST edition (April 4, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395771846
• ISBN-13: 978-0395771846
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,995,316 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, April 27, 2000

By 

Jeanine - See all my reviews

This review is from: CURE FOR DEATH BY LIGHTNING CL (Hardcover)

I think that a lot of other readers missed the point of "The Cure for Death by Lightning." This is not a novel about the solution to the problem of a dysfunctional family. It is merely a journey that relays things how they happened. Unfortunately, aspects of this story happen too often in reality then most people would like to admit. By "aspects," I am referring to sexual abuse, violence and confusion of the soul. I'm not sure if this is a sort of autobiographical account from the writer or what motivated her to write this story. However, I suspect that these things did happen to her. We are so used to reading things that deal with issues of sexual abuse and violence and expect a remedy or some sort of therapeutic message to be sent, however, this is not necessary. Simply telling the tale tells a lot. As for Gail Anderson-Dargatz' writing style, it is surely a masterpiece. She starts off with a suspenseful beginning by making the reader wonder what it is that the main character hears. I appreciate the Indian folklore, or should I say First Nations' folklore that she includes in her story. When reading "The Cure for Death By Lightning," just stop and absorb the poetry of her words and appreciate the subtle message sent and remember that there is always redemption.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magical Realism, Translated/Transported North, June 19, 2002

By 

Lawrence E. Wilson (Mayfield, East Sussex, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Cure for Death by Lightning: A Novel (Paperback)

A very interesting first novel by Gail Anderson-Dargatz, just out in quality paperback. It's the story of 15-year-old Beth Weeks, daughter of a farming family in western Canada in the early years of WWII. Along with the commonplace grittiness of their farm life (the endless chores, the birth and death of livestock, the loneliness), there's also the oddities of small-town life, with its eccentrics, tragedies, property feuds, marriages, funerals, and festivals...and given the fact that Beth's dominating, temperamental father seems to be suffering from a combination of depression and psychosis, the Weeks family's popularity is not too high in town just now. There's also a strong undercurrent of Native American spirituality and mythology running through the novel---at times it's the only explanation for an event, unrational as that might sound. One might almost think of this as a Canadian version of a Latin American "magical realism" novel: translate tropic to temperate, jungle to prairie, Spanish heritage to British...The title originates with the scrapbook kept by Beth's mother, a hodgepodge of recipes, Christmas cards, household and family lore, observations, and agonies, a sort of collaged diary of this woman's private life.

I enjoy novels told in first-person narration, if the narrator's voice is an interesting one---and Beth is one of the more interesting voices I've come across lately.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars (3.5)Clear and resonant prose, exceptional moments....., May 7, 2002

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Cure for Death by Lightning: A Novel (Paperback)

This small novel could be a simple coming-of-age story. Or it could be a more complex structure of Canadian farm life, circa WWII, a small town, reservation Indians and common prejudice, nature's random cruelties and the vagaries of family dynamics.

The Weeks family depends upon one another for all their needs, in a daily battle for survival, caring for sheep and cows, planting fields, and other continuous farm chores, with the help of two hired hands. At a time when most young men have enlisted, the Weeks farms is envied, their son still at home, as well as two young Indian field workers, also of recruitment age. Nearby farms are plagued by marauding coyotes, as well as another "coyote", an animal, according to local lore, that inhabits weak men, causing brutal and barbarous acts against innocent victims, often helpless children. Whether this is fact or rumor, remains a mystery, and no easy explanation is suggested. Further complicating the churning sense of physical and mental exhaustion of farm life is an escalating boundary feud between Beth Week's father and a neighbor, "the Swede".

Beth confronts her own demons and sexual awakening, and discovers an inner core of strength, gleaned from her mother's own stolid self-reliance, a more defined sense of self. Eventually Beth fights off her father's unwanted attentions, and turns her frustration and hate for him into self-determination. He loses the power to stalk her days and nights, as does the frightening specter of the "coyote", a metaphor for the unknown fears we each carry in our hearts, and she resolves to face her fears, refusing intimidation. Some passages actually reminded me of the blunt honesty in To Kill A Mockingbird, recalling the ability children have to look at things (fears) straight on, unflinching. I felt a vague air of threat following me while I read; I found myself anticipating something, on alert. This particular sense added to the flavor of the novel, a kind of edginess I don't often find.