Dance Among the Flames

by Tori Eldridge

Overview

Passion. Horror. Betrayal. From the national bestselling author of the Lily Wong thriller series comes a “stunningly original” (F. Paul Wilson) dark journey into Brazilian mysticism about a desperate mother who rises from the slums to embrace Quimbanda magic amid her quest for the ultimate revenge. Across forty years, three continents, and a past incident in 1560 France, Serafina Olegario tests the boundaries of love, power, and corruption as she fights to escape her life of poverty and abuse. Serafina's quest begins in Brazil when she's possessed by the warrior goddess Yansã, who emboldens her to fight yet threatens to consume her spirit. Fueled by power and enticed by Exú, an immortal trickster and intermediary to the gods, Serafina turns to the seductive magic of Quimbanda. It’s dangerous to dance in the fire. But when you come from nothing, you have nothing to lose.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781955062084
Publisher:	Running Wild Press
Publication date:	05/24/2022
Pages:	350
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Tori Eldridge is the national bestselling author and Anthony, Lefty, and Macavity Awards finalist of the Lily Wong mystery thriller series—The Ninja Daughter, The Ninja's Blade, and The Ninja Betrayed. Her shorter works appear in the inaugural reboot of Weird Tales magazine and horror, dystopian, and other literary anthologies. Her horror screenplay The Gift—which inspired Dance Among the Flames—earned a semi-finalist spot for the Academy Nicholl Fellowship.
 
Before writing, Tori performed as an actress, singer, dancer on Broadway, television, and film, and earned a 5th degree black belt in To-Shin Do ninja martial arts. She is of Hawaiian, Chinese, Norwegian descent and was born and raised in Honolulu where she graduated from Punahou School with classmate Barack Obama. Tori's deep interest in world culture and religions has prompted her to visit nine countries, including Brazil.

Editorial Reviews

★ 02/28/2022

Eldridge (the Lily Wong series) wows with this astonishing and challenging tale of religion, magic, and trauma. In 1974, Serafina Olegario is raising her newborn son, Carlinhos, in the slums of Salvadore, Brazil, when she is momentarily possessed by the goddess Yansã and compelled to pursue the religion of Umbanda under the guidance of the Mãe de Santos. After a perceived betrayal, however, she splits from Umbanda for Quimbanda, becoming a powerful Quimbandeira and wielding dark and sensual magic to pursue power and seek revenge against those who have wronged her. In a parallel narrative set in the early 2000s, Serafina’s granddaughter, Adriana, experiences tragedy after tragedy before falling in love with an American artist amid an abusive marriage. Eldridge masterfully navigates the nuances of Brazilian religious syncretism and takes a deep and daring look into the issues of colorism, class, generational trauma, and physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. Spanning decades and generations, this is both a page-turner and an emotional powerhouse. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"Tautly written, mystical, and action-packed Dance Among the Flames will take you on a wild, thrilling ride through centuries and continents. Eldridge is at the top of her game, delivering an irresistibly sweeping adventure that will linger long after the gripping story ends. Don't miss it!"  —Lisa Unger, New York Times bestselling author of Last Girl Ghosted
 

"With Dance Among the Flames, Tori Eldridge looks for light and hope in the darkest corners of the human heart. She mixes mysticism and horror with seduction and vengeance to conjure real magic."  —Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of V-Wars and Ink

"With Dance Among the Flames, Tori Eldridge gifts us with a tale as dark as the holds of the Portuguese slave ships that carried the Yoruba gods from Africa to the New World. A stunningly original novel that breaks new ground with every shocking turn."  —F. Paul Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of The Keep

"Tori Eldridge's Dance Among the Flames is a mesmerizing blend of ancient dark magic and horrors both mystical and man-made. It was compelling, disturbing, beautifully crafted...in other words, I loved it!" —Lisa Morton, six-time Bram Stoker Award winner

"Eldridge wields her darkest magic yet in this sensual and richly layered novel of poverty, privilege, and power. Vibrant and brutal, Dance Among the Flames is a cultural triumph."  —Lee Murray, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Grotesque: Monster Stories

"Compulsively readable, with prose so smooth and evocative the pages fly by."  —Tim Waggoner, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Writing in the Dark

"The cost of justice is high in Dance Among the Flames, born in the fire of Tori Eldridge's radiant imagination. The journey begins in a Brazilian favela where characters are transformed by the need for hope. They discover power can flood through a body, allowing them to become more than human. I thoroughly enjoyed this glorious adventure!"  —Linda D. Addison, award-winning author, HWA Lifetime Achievement Award recipient and SFPA Grand Master

"Dance Among the Flames is a fascinating page-turner of a novel, rich with details yet written with a lushly sparse elegance that manages to immerse the reader in the story, settings and characters without sacrificing pace or action. A winner!"  —Dana Fredsti, author of Blood Ink and the Ashley Parker series

From the Publisher

2022-02-09
An epic novel steeped in Brazilian history and spiritualism mixes a dark, mystical thriller, a supernatural horror story, and a fantastical cautionary tale that spans centuries.

Set largely in Brazil between the 1970s and the present day—but also featuring sequences from 16th-century France—the story revolves around Serafina Olegario, a young woman whose married lover rejects her and her son, throwing her carefully made plans for the future into chaos. Feeling powerless and without direction, Serafina embraces the Umbanda religion, which fuses African traditions with Roman Catholicism and Indigenous American beliefs. After becoming an Umbanda medium and having direct contact with deities—some of whom possess her at times—Serafina eventually uses her power for not only vengeance, but also to manipulate her son Carlinhos’ and his daughter Adriana’s lives. With the immortal trickster god Exú guiding her, Serafina becomes obsessed with her granddaughter—whom she wrongfully blames for many of her and her son’s misfortunes—and the woman’s lover, an American artist. This work is a dramatic departure from Eldridge’s Lily Wong mystery series. Enriched by a deep exploration of race, social status, and family, the novel displays another obvious strength in the author’s lyrical writing style: Adriana “was beautiful, painfully so, and his heart ached just to look at her. The dark sable hair. The honey pecan skin. The pearlescent sheath that draped from one shoulder, across her breasts, and fell to the floor like the gown of a Grecian goddess.” But because of the book’s nonlinear structure—coupled with the grand-scale nature of the tale, whose origins go back to a 1560 village in France where an innocent young woman was burned at the stake—the narrative momentum takes a while to get up to speed, making for an initially plodding reading experience. Yet once the audience begins to understand the work’s larger picture and starts to put the narrative pieces together, the story takes off.

This genre-blending tale’s explosive payoff compensates for a slow, meandering beginning.

Kirkus Reviews