In the Land of Winter

by Richard Grant

Overview

Pippa Rede—a contemporary witch and devoted mother of nine-year-old Winterbelle—struggles for subsistence in a frigid northeeastern corner of America. When her daughter is stolen from her by bigots and zeealots who have labeled Pippa an unfit parent, Pippa retreats into the dark, wild wood on a transforming inner quest, determined to unlock the strengths she will need to win back her Winterbelle.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780380791408
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	12/01/1998
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	0.00(w) x 0.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Richard Grant is the author of seven novels, including In the Land of Winter, published in hardcover by Avon Books in November 1997. His book, Through the Heart, won the Philip K. Dick Award. He lives in Lincolnville, on the coast of Maine.

Editorial Reviews

Darkly amusing...poignantly real...Magic blossoms, along with Grant's glorious sense of humor...[and] his eloquent focus on our own world, on issues which may be mainstream but cannot be dismissed as mundane...Grant [has a] gift [for] invoking -- then going a step beyond -- life's wonders.

Locus

Lyrical...relevant...compelling and fantastical...an imaginative and emotional tale...This novel will rip the heart out of every mother who has ever feared the loss of her child -- not to a natural cause of tragic accident but, instead, to bigots and state bureaucrats mad with intolerance and power.

Maine Times

Wicca practitioner Pippa Rede loses her only daughter, nine-year-old Winterbelle, to representatives of the State of Maine in the droll, magical seventh novel (Tex and Molly in the Afterlife, etc.) from New England's answer to Tom Robbins. Betrayed to the authorities by her aunt, fired from her job at the local florist's and evicted from her house (all shortly before Christmas), Pippa soon finds herself a Job among witches. In order to get her daughter back, she must learn to become more of a witch than ever before, to take on such impassive foes as the Department of Family Services, the Christian right and all those fighting against QROST (quasi-ritualized occultic sexual traumatization), the syndrome-of-the-week. In Pippa's ragtag corner are the likes of hippie throwback lawyer Arthur Torvid and a guy who may or may not be a werewolf. Despite patches of self-conscious, coy prose, Grant delivers an entertaining fairy tale of religious persecutionand a cautionary tale about society's penchant for fad diagnoses and back-seat mothering. Author tour. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The ever unpredictable, loopy Grant, who specializes in midworlds (Tex and Molly in the Afterlife, 1996, etc.), takes us—with little allure—into a frigid and tree-filled New England 'burb near Mount Wabenaki, where witches stir their brews.

A husbandless young wiccan, Pippa Rede, works in the Rose Petal and Thorn flower shop supporting herself and her adorably sensible nine-year-old daughter, the elfin Winterbelle. Pippa is often distraught, but the sweet Winterbelle helps soothe her buffetings. Then the local Herald begins printing attacks on satanism, pointing to Pippa. It's all very unfair—she is, after all, only a friendly, contemporary young witch trying to make it on her own, for heaven's sake. At school Winterbelle seems to outwit meddling psychologist Carol Aaby, who nonetheless comes that night to the Rede home with the Department of Family Services and removes Winterbelle from the house of witchcraft. Things get worse as Pippa is fired from the Rose Petal and Thorn for being scary to Christians during the shop's big Christmas season. Will the editor of the Herald consider helping her? Will lawyer Arthur Torvid, fuming about Constitutional rights, come to her aid? Not bloody likely when psychologist Aaby calls Pippa the Devil's pawn and the Herald prints an alarmist letter about "ritual abuse." Pippa finally gets help from an unexpected source: Spear, a Native American law-school dropout, has developed a special personal interest in people who are doing something that doesn't make sense to anybody else—such as wiccans—and he proves more than a match for Pippa's many enemies.

The bad guys are one-dimensional, the conflict hopelessly banal. Here, sentimentality flattens all interest.

Kirkus Reviews