This was a dark, imaginative, powerful book. A modern retelling and reimagining of Baba Yaga, and how the insidious nature of cultural/generational trauma are passed down throughout history and shape the stories we hold onto and continue to pass down.

I wish I would've taken the time to read the physical copy of this book, as I think I would've pinpointed a lot more quotes and taken more away from the story as a whole, but this was one that gripped me and held me in its clutches from the first page. If you're looking for modern Jewish representation that deals with challenging topics like eugenics, antisemitism, ethnic cleansing, and generational trauma with a taste of magical realism and a fairytale retelling (Baba Yaga telling her story throughout some chapters and Thistlefoot!) - this book is a good choice for you.

I'll simply share a couple of approximate quotes that I remembered to tag in my audiobook copy. They may not appear below the same way they appear in the written text, but the word-for-word recitation should be precise enough.

"'There was a lot of talk about the proper way to behave in the cemetery. Don't step on the grave, don't talk too loud, don't eat or drink or climb on the stones. But you know what, Belle? All those people making all those rules, they got it wrong. That's not respect. You know the only real way to respect people whose lives are over? Or those like me, whose lives never even began?'
'How?' Bellatine breathed. She wanted to know. She wanted to learn everything. Somehow she'd dismissed Winnifred as ditzy, frivolous, airy, but she was wrong. This was an ancient being. She was a part of the planet itself. Winnifred's eyes lit up.
'You prove to them that you aren't wasting yours.'"
.........
"'It's the story,' Isaac realized. 'He's trying to stop the story.'
How do you ruin a people? Is it with fire? Is it with bullets? You can drag a man through the street tied to the back of a horse. You can incinerate a village. Can line families up in rows against a brick wall and fell them one by one like a forest. But all it takes is one survivor, and the story lives on. One survivor to carry the poems and the songs, the prayers, the sorrows. It isn't just taking a life that destroys a people - it's taking their history. That was why the Longshadow Man needed to burn Thistlefoot - because the house remembered. Kill the story, and you kill the culture. You can't destroy an act of destruction. But if the story lives on, the whole story - not only the death of the place, but the life - then, the slaughterer has lost."