The Cure for Death by Lightning: A Novel [Paperback]

Gail Anderson-Dargatz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 8, 2002

When fifteen-year-old Beth Week’s family is attacked by a grizzly, her father becomes increasingly violent, making him a danger to his neighbors, his family, and especially Beth. Meanwhile, several young children from the nearby Indian reservation have gone missing, and Beth fears that something is pursuing her in the bush. But friendship with an Indian girl connects her to a mythology that enriches her landscape; and an unexpected protector shores up her world.
Set on an isolated Canadian farm in the midst of World War II, The Cure for Death by Lightning evokes a life at once harshly demanding and rich in sensory pleasures: the deafening chatter of starlings, the sight of thousands of painted turtles crossing a road, the smell of baking that fills the Weeks’s kitchen. The novel is sprinkled throughout with recipes and remedies from the scrapbook Beth’s mother keeps, a boon to Beth as she learns to face down her demons--and one of many elements that give The Cure for Death by Lightning its enchanting vitality.

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Anchor (January 8, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385720475
• ISBN-13: 978-0385720472
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,482,133 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 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.

4 of 4 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.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars disturbing and beautiful, February 23, 2003

By 

camm - See all my reviews

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

I picked this up for a light read, but soon realized I'd judged too quickly from the cover. The Cure for Death by Lightning layers folklore and mythology and the simple pleasures of baking with the gritty realities of family tragedy - of incest, violence, blindness and mental illness- all the while illuminating the strength and inner beauty of Beth Weeks and her growth into a woman.

I read an essay about Jane Austen once that discussed how tragedy, real tragedy, occurs in the setting of the household. It is because they are so close to us and so beloved that our family can be the cause of the greatest hurt. Brother pitted against brother, incest, domestic violence...the household is the centerpiece of tragedy. And if this is so, then Beth Weeks has known more than her fair share of tragedy. And yet, the novel manages to be hopeful without being sentimental, realistic without forgoing beauty.

Reading this book may disturb you, but will leave you with an indelible impression of blue forget-me-nots, the sooty marks of a hand on another, the imagined scent of violets, and the fragrance of fresh-baked pound cake.