I find it hard to express my thoughts and feelings about this book. I walked away from the book with a feeling of bittersweet vindication. I've described the book as compulsive, meandering, ephemeral, and evocative, but it is also none of those things. Rather, it exists in some space between all of those where we drift between the harsh reality of a small mining town trying to fight an uncaring corporation and the main character, Orchid's, enchantment with the fen the corporaiton is trying to destroy and her husband, Jack, who is intimately connected to the fen literally and in her mythos of him.

The book follows Orchid, a young Romany woman, who lives in Carminetown, a mining town in Canada. In part because of her name, she has an affinity for orchids. In the fen, she meets Jack, a non-Romany man, falls in love, and marries him, against her mother's wishes. This summary does nothing to capture the spirit or atmosphere of the book which is where its power comes from. The reader is walking through Orchid's dreams and mightmares as she navigates a situation beyond her control, in a town that will only conditionally accept her, along with the normals up and downs of young love and early marriage.

This book is a feeling: a feeling of loss, of love, of survival, of despair, of heartbreak, of resurrection, of resentment, of anger. There is definitely a plot, but the importance of the plot only registers in terms of what matters to Orchid. And that deep investment in a singular character will leaves enduring marks on you, the reader.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.