From Our Editors
Some people record the passage of time in diaries while others go
by photographs and memories associated with music, food or scent.
The Cure for Death by Lightning captures
Beth Weeks' story on the pages of her mother's
scrapbook of recipes and home remedies. Set against the backdrop of
daily life in remote Turtle Valley, B.C., it relates the story of
her 15th summer and transition from childhood to adulthood. It was
also shortlisted for the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel
Award.
From the Publisher
"The cure for death by lightning was handwritten in thick, messy
blue ink in my mother's scrapbook, under the recipe for my father's
favourite oatcakes: Dunk the dead by lightning in a cold water
bath for two hours and if still dead, add vinegar and soak for an
hour more."
So begins Gail Anderson-Dargatz's extraordinary first novel, a
seductive and thrilling book that captures the heart and
imagination, as filled with the magic and mystery of life as it is
with its lurking evils and gut-wrenching hardships. The
Cure for Death by Lightning sold more than a staggering
100,000 copies in Canada alone and became a bestseller in Great
Britain, later to be published in the United States and Europe. It
was nominated for the Giller Prize, the richest fiction prize in
Canada, and received a Betty Trask Award in the U.K.
The Cure for Death by Lightning takes place in the
poor, isolated farming community of Turtle Valley, British
Columbia, in the shadow of the Second World War. The fifteenth
summer of Beth Weeks's life is full of strange happenings: a
classmate is mauled to death; children go missing on the nearby
reserve; an unseen predator pursues Beth. She is surrounded by
unusual characters, including Nora, the sensual half-Native girl
whose friendship provides refuge; Filthy Billy, the hired hand with
Tourette's Syndrome; and Nora's mother, who has a man's voice and
an extra little finger. Then there's the darkness within her own
family: her domineering, shell-shocked father has fits of madness,
and her mother frequently talks to the dead. Beth, meanwhile, must
wrestle with her newfound sexuality in a harsh world where nylons,
perfume and affection have no place. Then, in a violent storm, she
is struck by lightning in her arm, and nothing is quite the same
again. She decides to explore the dangers of the bush.
Beth is a strong, honest, and compassionate heroine, bringing hope
and joy into an environment that is often cruel. The character of
Beth's haunted mother infuses the book with life by means of her
scrapbook of recipes scattered throughout, with luscious
descriptions of food, gardening, and remedies, both practical and
bizarre. Seen through Beth's eyes, the West Coast landscape is full
of beauty and mysteries, with its forests and rivers, and its rich
native culture.
The Globe and Mail commented that The Cure for
Death by Lightning was "Canadian to the core," with hints
of Susannah Moodie and Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro.
Anderson-Dargatz's vision of rural life has drawn comparisons with
William Faulkner and John Steinbeck. A magic realism reminiscent of
Latin American literature is also present, as flowers rain from the
sky, and men turn into animals. Yet the style of The Cure
for Death by Lightning, which the Boston Globe
called "Pacific Northwest Gothic," is wholly original. Launched in
a year with more than the usual number of excellent first novels
(1996 was also the year of Fall On Your Knees by
Ann-Marie MacDonald and Fugitive Pieces by Anne
Michaels), this book with its assured voice heralds a worthy
successor to Margaret Atwood, Carol Shields, Margaret Laurence and
Alice Munro.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
About the Author
Gail Anderson-Dargatz, whose fictional style has been coined as
"Pacific Northwest Gothic" by the Boston Globe, has been
compared by critics to John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Flannery
O'Connor, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Salman Rushdie and Gabriel
García Márquez. Her novels have been published worldwide in English
and in many other languages. A Recipe for Bees and
The Cure for Death by Lighting were international
bestsellers, published worldwide in English and in many other
languages, and were both short-listed for the prestigious Giller
Prize in Canada. The Cure for Death by Lightning
won the UK's Betty Trask Prize among other awards. A
Rhinestone Button was a national bestseller in Canada and
her first book, The Miss Hereford Stories, was
short-listed for the Leacock Award for humour.
Her mother, who also wrote, instilled literary confidence in Gail,
so that by the age of eighteen, Gail knew she wanted to be the next
Margaret Laurence, writing about Canadian women in rural settings.
"Laurence''s interest in them made me feel that their and my
experience was important."
In her early twenties, the future author got a job as a reporter
for her hometown paper, the Salmon Arm Observer, but
continued to enter her fiction in competitions, and she started to
win. One submission caught the attention of the writer Jack
Hodgins, who encouraged her to enroll in his course at the
University of Victoria. She graduated from there with a B.A. in
creative writing.
Gail''s literary career began to take off when she won first prize
in the CBC Literary Competition for a story taken from an early
draft of her first novel, The Cure for Death by
Lightning. When a Toronto literary agent took her on she
already had a short story collection ready to go: The Miss
Hereford Stories. Set in the 1960s in the fictional town
of Likely, Alberta, ("what you call a half-horse town") the book,
with its cast of colourful eccentrics, was published in 1994 and
nominated for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. The
Cure for Death by Lightning, her first novel, followed two
years later.
Saturday Night magazine has said that the inclination to
write about rural characters sets Anderson-Dargatz apart from many
writers of her generation, who tend towards urban fiction. What
does she find so fascinating about small-town and country life?
"Once you step off the concrete, life stops being abstract and
starts being very real, very immediate, very fundamental and very
sensual." On this topic, the Financial Post said, "Anyone
who thinks rural characters in Canadian fiction are dull and bland
should pick up one of Gail Anderson-Dargatz's novels. … The only
certainty in her world view is that anything can, and very often
does, happen."
Although she is influenced by Margaret Laurence, Alice Munro, her
mentor Jack Hodgins and favourite writers such as Toni Morrison,
she says her inspiration comes "from the people and landscapes
around me more than from other books." Her style has been called
"Margaret Laurence meets Gabriel García Márquez" because her
writing tends towards magic realism, but she says the ghosts and
premonitions in her writing arise from family stories of the
Thompson-Shuswap region, which she carefully transcribed. "My
father passed on the rich stories and legends about the region I
grew up in, which he heard from the interior Salish natives he
worked with. And my mother told me tales of her own premonitions,
and of ghosts, eccentrics and dark deeds that haunted the
area."
Gail Anderson-Dargatz has just recently returned home to the
Thompson-Shuswap region found in so much of her writing, and she
currently teaches advanced novel and advanced fiction in the
Creative Writing MFA program at the University of British Columbia.
Hardcover
384 Pages, 0 x 0 x 0 IN
April 30, 1996
Knopf Canada
0394281578
9780394281575