“Here be witches and wayward girls grown into lonely women spooked by the wind.”
I recently finished Alice Hoffman’s The Invisible Hour, and for me, it just fell short. Imagine my surprise when I opened Willa Reece’s Wildwood Magic (Redhook 2023 – thanks to the publisher for the finished copy!) and found myself faced with an apple orchard, a cult where reading is not allowed, a dangerous and abusive man, and The Scarlet Letter. It’s as if Hoffman and Reece were given the same writing prompt, and in my opinion, Reece did the better job.
Rachel is raised by the strict Sisters after her mother died, and her entire world is controlled and dictated by religion. As a teenager, she breaks free for one night – walking away from the revival tent and finding herself in an apple orchard. She’s cared for and fed, and in the morning the sheriff comes to take her back. Years later, she’s married to the preacher. A man with a terrifying bloodlust – unlike Dimmesdale, he strikes his wife, not himself, relishing in the blood left on his gold wedding ring and on the cover of his Bible. When she finds out she’s pregnant, she fakes her death and runs away – back to the orchard that had nourished her heart, soul and body so many years before.
In order to keep her baby safe, a baby she names “Pearl,” she knows she cannot keep her. The child is placed with a loving woman within the community that will embrace Rachel, if only she lets it. But she’s afraid, and she hides away until she can’t hide any longer; the revival has come to Morgan Gap, hellbent on weeding out the “wayward women” and the witches, and at its head is Rachel’s husband. She has to stop being afraid and trust herself and others to save her daughter and the town.
The Hawthorne touches are perfect. The animal familiars are a pure delight. (A snake, an owl, a weasel, bees, a bobcat, a goat… I want a familiar.) Rachel’s talents being stitching and stirring, traditionally very domestic and motherly tasks, do not go unnoticed. The love story with the tinker – *chef’s kiss. The flashbacks to Siobhan, who brought the apple seeds with her from Ireland, and in particular, the dreams of her and the beekeeper, are sticky and bittersweet.
Wildwood Magic is the best kind of magic.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 