Empire of Wild By Cherie Dimaline
By Cherie Dimaline
Joan is a member of a tribe in Canada that is made up of what she calls half-breeds, a tribe that is constantly struggling against political factors that want to take their land for profit. One night, after a fight with her husband Victor over selling some of the land left to her by her dead father, Victor disappears. Joan's life falls apart afterward as she struggles to get through life without him, always looking out for him, and not knowing what happened to him.
One day she stumbles across a religious revival tent in a Walmart parking lot, goes inside, and finds her husband as the Reverend of a church devoted to getting the half-breed population to adopt this Christian religion. But the whole thing is a cover created by the very shrewd businessman, Heiser. Is this Reverend Wolff her husband. He doesn't recognize her and insists he is not who she thinks he is.
Along this story is the legend of the rogarou, a wolf/man hybrid that is said to eat people who do not follow the rules and is a story used to keep the tribe members in line. Joan's family believes in this beast and Joan has reason to believe that Heiser is one of them and has bewitched Victor, brainwashing him into forgetting her and working for the aims of the Christian church. But is Heiser a rougarou? Or is Victor?
This was an interesting story, and I wasn't expecting the folkloric element. It was a pleasant surprise because the story was full of tension and the buildup to the climax where the true rogarou is revealed was well-done, even if I knew the answer early on. Dimaline keeps enough doubt that I was engaged with the story to the end. The writing was fun and clipped along at a good pace, with characters riddled with human faults and doubts that made them seem very real. It is an interesting concept and one of the things I like about some of the indigenous thriller/horror books I've read. This story is set in Canada, so that was another interesting element that took me out of my own sphere of familiarity.
I very good, fun 4-star read.
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