Product Description
Once upon a time, a young peasant girl subdued a rapacious count by weaving stinging nettles into cloth. Like the resource-ful nettle spinner of the Flemish folk tale, the heroine of Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer’s first novel must find a way to deal with sexual violence. Alma, a tough-minded young loner, has spent several summers planting trees with a gang of filthy former hippies, idealistic students, and transients. By day, she and her fellow planters bake in the sun, tormented by mosquitoes and blackflies. By night, they escape from their toil with booze, dope, and sex. In an emotional tailspin after a love affair and a rape, Alma flees to an abandoned mining camp, where she constructs for herself and her unwanted baby a bizarre — and increasingly ominous — new world.
From the Publisher
A stark, vigorous, and sophisticated weave of folklore and gritty realism
