Beautifully written, hauntingly told, a New Face of Fiction novel that in its storytelling and recounting of a multi-generational family story brings to mind Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude - and in its evocation of the mythic wilderness, Joseph Boyden's Three Day Road.
My grandfather lifted the cup of tea and blew on it again. We were waiting for him to speak, and like any good storyteller he savored the anticipation, letting us dangle for just an extra moment. "I came back," he said, "to introduce Stephen to his grandmother."
"What?" My mother stared at him as if he had lost his mind.
"Why have I come back to Sawgamet? Why now?" He looked at me. "I've come for your grandmother," he said. "I've come to raise the dead."
This is Sawgamet, a mining boomtown gone bust, a logging village where the cold of winter breaks the glass of the schoolhouse thermometer, where the dangers of working in the cuts are overshadowed by the dark mysteries lurking in the woods. Thirty years after his grandfather's pronouncement, Stephen, now a pastor with a wife and family, returns home on the eve of his mother's funeral, to reconnect with the stories of his mythic grandfather and to confront the losses of childhood. Introducing a world of wonder and tenderness, a world where the monsters and witches of the woods are set against singing dogs and golden caribou, Touch is a haunting tale of three generations of love and loss in a town in Northern BC.
Genre: Fantasy
My grandfather lifted the cup of tea and blew on it again. We were waiting for him to speak, and like any good storyteller he savored the anticipation, letting us dangle for just an extra moment. "I came back," he said, "to introduce Stephen to his grandmother."
"What?" My mother stared at him as if he had lost his mind.
"Why have I come back to Sawgamet? Why now?" He looked at me. "I've come for your grandmother," he said. "I've come to raise the dead."
This is Sawgamet, a mining boomtown gone bust, a logging village where the cold of winter breaks the glass of the schoolhouse thermometer, where the dangers of working in the cuts are overshadowed by the dark mysteries lurking in the woods. Thirty years after his grandfather's pronouncement, Stephen, now a pastor with a wife and family, returns home on the eve of his mother's funeral, to reconnect with the stories of his mythic grandfather and to confront the losses of childhood. Introducing a world of wonder and tenderness, a world where the monsters and witches of the woods are set against singing dogs and golden caribou, Touch is a haunting tale of three generations of love and loss in a town in Northern BC.
Genre: Fantasy
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