Hag

by Kathleen Kaufman

Overview

At this, the Cailleach would release a single drop of indigo dye onto the topmost layer. See, she would tell her daughter. See? It bleeds through the topmost path and onto the next. In this way, so many things from the next world touch ours, and our world touches the layer beneath.

High above the sea, hidden in the rocky Scottish cliffs, something stirs. An ancient matriarchal power has set the wheels in motion for a long line of descendants. But to what end?

Spanning centuries of human history, these daughters of the lowland hag, the Cailleach, must navigate a world filled with superstition, hatred, violence, pestilence, and death to find their purpose. With pasts half remembered and destinies denied, the daughters of Cailleach are women with uncanny, and often feared, abilities to heal, to see the future and to cause great destruction and pain when threatened. With each passing generation, the waves crash against the shore, and the Cailleach awaits a homecoming that will bring everything full circle.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781684421671
Publisher:	TURNER PUB CO
Publication date:	10/02/2018
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Kathleen Kaufman is a native Coloradan and long-time resident of Los Angeles. Her prose has been praised by Kirkus Reviews as “crisp, elegant” and “genuinely chilling” by Booklist. She is the author of The Tree Museum, The Lairdbalor, soon to be a feature film with Echo Lake Studios and director Nicholas Verso, and her most recent, Hag, due out in October 2018. Kathleen is a monster enthusiast, Olympic-level insomniac and aficionado of all things unsettling. When not writing, she can be found teaching literature and composition at Santa Monica College or hanging out with a good book. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, son, terrier and a pack of cats.

Read an Excerpt

"At this, the Cailleach would release a single drop of indigo dye onto the topmost layer. See, she would tell her daughter. See? It bleeds through the topmost path and onto the next. In this way, so many things from the next world touch ours, and our world touches the layer beneath."

Editorial Reviews

09/03/2018
Kaufman (The Lairdbalor) draws on Gaelic mythology to weave a complex, nonlinear novel about secret, shared feminine power. By the age of six, Alice Grace Kyles knew her ability to peer into people’s pasts and futures was unique. As she grows, sheltered by her mother and beloved aunt, she treads a path similar to the magic-wielding women who have come before her, acknowledging her power to harm and to save. But it takes most of a lifetime for Alice to understand that she is descended from the Cailleach, a maternal deity who has infused her daughters with powers before sending them off into the world. Even though they forget the power they yield, these women are bound together across time by the legacy of that power. Character development and insight are repeatedly sacrificed to the complicated structure of the book, but Kaufman’s narrative skill will still draw fans of folklore and the occult into this heady multigenerational legend. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

…a superb novel of heritage and struggle that just happens to be a brilliant witch story… Kaufman’s prose is elegant and light allowing her story to come to the fore with ease leaving readers feeling light but yet resonant with the pages’ meaning. A masterly blend of mythology and modernity, Hag is a supremely satisfying novel.” —Daniel Casey, Misanthropester.com

"I was intrigued with Hag by Kathleen Kaufman from the first sentences. Who was the Cailleach? What was her curse? Then, the book shifted into an ordinary child's viewpoint, though we learn later that Alice and her ancestors are a "confusing mixture of magical and ordinary." The answers to those questions come in enchanting puzzle pieces that kept me reading! The aspects of time, brought out through the lovely metaphor of the ink penetrating layers of cloth, as "reality happening alongside hers, and in the same breath was long past and nothing but a memory. The two worlds spun alongside each other, neither more nor less real than the other...." still has me thinking about concepts of time! I would recommend this book especially to readers intrigued with mythology and how time might work." —Geraldine Ann Marshall, author

"Kaufman’s Hag shifts the paradigm of masculine historical into feminist horror. The Cailleach, a powerful and ancient sea hag, sends her descendants into the world of man, where they endure war and heartbreak, insult and malice. This magical matriarchy, distinguished by the eldritch mark they bear, teach and heal and protect others as women have quietly done for untold ages. Discover centuries of Scottish history, revisit decades of the modern era, and reclaim a feminine form of storytelling passed down from mother to daughter unseen since the chronicles of the Brothers Grimm." — Karen Bovenmyer, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Scholarship Awardee, Horror Writers Association

"Gorgeously written, Hag intricately weaves a story from past to present. Readers longing to be swept away into another world will devour this book." —Megan Hart, NYT Bestselling Author of All the Lies We Tell

"Kathleen Kaufman’s rich characterization deftly makes all the magic, joy, and pain of Hag heartbreakingly real for the reader. Part incisive ethnography, part descent into the horrors of the past, this book has the binge-read-inducing feel of an honest and juicy memoir. Hag not only distinguishes itself from the crowd in contemporary dark and fantasy literature, but raises the bar. " —John Edward Lawson, author of Bibliophobia

"Hag by Kathleen Kaufman is an epic and chilling tale of Cailleach and her daughters set loose in world and destined to manifest their mother's magic in whatever era they land. Kaufman weaves a fascinating tale of feminine power. These are the stories women have been telling down through the ages. Finally, we can read them!" —Kate Jonez, Bram Stoker Award Winning Editor at Omnium Gatherum

From the Publisher