Thistlefoot

Read Time: 3 Minutes

Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott is a dark, magical road trip soaked in Eastern European folklore, memory, and generational trauma. It opens with a tumbleweed. A very American symbol, but apparently an invasive Russian thistle. Who knew? Not me, apparently! Always a good start then when I get to learn something new.

Estranged and gifted siblings Bellatine and Isaac Yaga are reunited after years apart when they are bequeathed a mysterious inheritance from their long-lost ancestor. Isaac is hustling tourists in New Orleans at the time. He has an ability where he can take on the appearance of anyone, like literally become their twin. A likeable character at first, he quickly loses that appeal once he starts interacting with his sister.

Bellatine’s gift is somewhat more esoteric and isn’t fully described until later in the book. It’s described as an “embering”, where she has a heat underneath her skin that imbue puppets and other objects with life for a short time. Handy, if you’re a puppeteer as the siblings were when growing up.

The inheritance, as you probably can guess, is a house on chicken legs. Fortunately for the siblings, mutant houses and buildings aren’t that uncommon in the world they inhabit. Disasters have a tendency to kick off random mutations, like a house growing gills after a burst pipe floods the basement, or another growing an eye for some reason.

Somebody isn’t happy the house has shown up again after so long. The Longshadow Man, a creeping figure from the old country that doesn’t attack you directly, instead he infects you with fear, hatred, anxiety, warping your mind until you turn on the people around you.

The whole old-world folklore was stitched together with an undercurrent of Americana. An American Gothic atmosphere of rusty freight trains, dusty roads, and that old-school hobo riding-the-rails energy. Isaac, for as much as I dislike him as a character, embodies that vibe, having bummed around the country for years, picking up the lingo and survival tricks of the rail-hopping underclass. There’s a kind of mythic grime to it. Folklore not just passed down and picked up in rail yards and back alleys, shared between drifters and outcasts.

That aesthetic added depth to the story’s already surreal world. It’s not just mutant houses and puppet magic, but the culture of the American roadside. Deserts, trains, and the kind of folks who live between the lines.

January LaVoy handles narration, and she’s does an excellent job of it. No issues with the production that I made note of. I did note that she knew how to pronounce certain street names in New Orleans in their not-correct-but-correct way. Like “Burgundy” street pronounced as “Bur-GUN-dee” rather than like the wine “Burg-en-dee”, or “Calliope” like “Cal-e-ope” rather than “Cal-eye-oh-pee”. Facts that I only know because I remember listening to someone rattle off a few of them once in their frustration over street names.

Not a particularly fast-paced novel, but I enjoyed the time it took to get where it was going. It’s a strange one, but in a good way. If you like your magic weird, your stakes personal, and your folklore bleeding into the roadside diner aesthetic of modern America, it’s worth a listen. Just don’t accept drinks from shadowy figures.

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