Memoirs of a Shape-Shifter
Nikki Helmik—anger-prone, no-longer-young feminist, single mother, and erstwhile Cambridge lawyer—following her father’s recent death has returned to the vacant family home in Gloucester, Massachusetts, to begin a new and quieter life. Her yellow-shingled cottage lies under the branches of mysterious Dogtown woods, once home to Druids and witches. But Nikki grows increasingly unsettled to find herself caught by the charms of the princely Philip, a married man who has recently moved back to the family estate yet who proves maddeningly elusive.
Or has Nikki got it backwards: Is she in fact the fleeing one, mistaking emotion for feeling and presuming matters of romance as women’s natural territory? The earth’s escalating tremors soon leave her shaken to the core when she discovers the lost journal of her shape-shifting ancestor, Anne Cleves, a Druid princess and powerful magician living in Dogtown during the period of the Salem witch trials. Defending herself against her beautiful mentor’s vengeance, Nikki must race against her own tangled desires and the bend of time while translating the arcane work, finally to be initiated into her own Druid nature.
This woman’s post-millenium journey of self-discovery swoops and plunges amidst the rocky cliffs of the New England coast and in its deep forests. Nikki’s story is intertwined with her foremother’s riveting first-person tale, vividly presented as living history steeped exotically in Celtic lore. Kaplan-Maxfield’s artful story-telling provocatively enacts the mystery at the heart of the book: the power of words to make magic—in the process turning our conventional understanding of power on its head.
A work of fiction with Gothic undertones shifting between present-day and colonial New England, "Memoirs of a Shape-Shifter" contains within the third-person narrative of Nikki Helmik the found journal of her ancestor, Anne Cleves, written strikingly in first-person. A dramatic story of love, loss, and Druid magic, Anne’s journal strangely echoes Nikki’s own struggle to resolve the crises in her life. Haunted and inspired by her ancestor, Nikki becomes a Druid magician, resolving for herself the deadly attraction between power and love.
This psychological exploration of a woman’s all-too-contemporary personal upheaval oscillates between realism and romance, contemplative drama and adventure story, replete with Druid magicians, centuries-old curses, wolves, ravens, and the mystery of a broken brooch. Down Gloucester’s narrow streets, deep into Dogtown woods, teetering on granite cliffs and plunged into stormy North Atlantic seas, the reader is drawn into a labyrinth in which the age-old war of the sexes is given a new twist.
A spell-binding novel, "Memoirs of a Shape-Shifter" twists the eternal tension between love and power into a marvelous Celtic knot.
Forty-year-old Nikki Helmik returns to her hometown of Gloucester, Massachusetts, and falls in love with Philip, who is the son of her erstwhile mentor, the rich and beautiful Rose Eveless. Nikki's desire for the married Philip conflicts with her feminist ideals as well as with Rose's wrath, setting the younger woman on a journey of love and self-discovery. Sent on a parallel course to find and translate the spell-binding journal of her Druid ancestor Anne Cleves--presented over a self-contained span of three chapters as a first-person story of life in colonial America during the time of the Salem witch trials and beyond--Nikki is initiated into her own power and discovers a new way of loving.
Keywords:
Memoirs of a Shape-Shifter is a Harry Potter for adults, New England, late 17th century and present-day Gloucester, Massachusetts, Dogtown, forested preserve, love and relationships, women's issues including mother-daughter relationships, career paths, female mentoring, health, beauty, rape, childbirth and rearing, prostitution, religious issues such as Christianity, earth worship, tarot and Wicca, alternative religious practices including chanting, magic circles, ceremonies of welcoming and drug-induced initiation, animal-spirit worship, New England fishing industry, magic, ghosts, Irish and Celtic studies, Celtic myth, Druidism and Ogham (ogam), shamanism, shape-shifting (shapeshifting), spell casting, witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, Puritanism, the King Philip War, Native American issues including tribal life, smallpox epidemic, poetry as imagination and metaphor, relationship between words (poetry) and magic, chick lit, literary fiction, gothic romance, original novel, print publication date October 1, 2005, e-book publication date September 2010
1007087196
Memoirs of a Shape-Shifter
Nikki Helmik—anger-prone, no-longer-young feminist, single mother, and erstwhile Cambridge lawyer—following her father’s recent death has returned to the vacant family home in Gloucester, Massachusetts, to begin a new and quieter life. Her yellow-shingled cottage lies under the branches of mysterious Dogtown woods, once home to Druids and witches. But Nikki grows increasingly unsettled to find herself caught by the charms of the princely Philip, a married man who has recently moved back to the family estate yet who proves maddeningly elusive.
Or has Nikki got it backwards: Is she in fact the fleeing one, mistaking emotion for feeling and presuming matters of romance as women’s natural territory? The earth’s escalating tremors soon leave her shaken to the core when she discovers the lost journal of her shape-shifting ancestor, Anne Cleves, a Druid princess and powerful magician living in Dogtown during the period of the Salem witch trials. Defending herself against her beautiful mentor’s vengeance, Nikki must race against her own tangled desires and the bend of time while translating the arcane work, finally to be initiated into her own Druid nature.
This woman’s post-millenium journey of self-discovery swoops and plunges amidst the rocky cliffs of the New England coast and in its deep forests. Nikki’s story is intertwined with her foremother’s riveting first-person tale, vividly presented as living history steeped exotically in Celtic lore. Kaplan-Maxfield’s artful story-telling provocatively enacts the mystery at the heart of the book: the power of words to make magic—in the process turning our conventional understanding of power on its head.
A work of fiction with Gothic undertones shifting between present-day and colonial New England, "Memoirs of a Shape-Shifter" contains within the third-person narrative of Nikki Helmik the found journal of her ancestor, Anne Cleves, written strikingly in first-person. A dramatic story of love, loss, and Druid magic, Anne’s journal strangely echoes Nikki’s own struggle to resolve the crises in her life. Haunted and inspired by her ancestor, Nikki becomes a Druid magician, resolving for herself the deadly attraction between power and love.
This psychological exploration of a woman’s all-too-contemporary personal upheaval oscillates between realism and romance, contemplative drama and adventure story, replete with Druid magicians, centuries-old curses, wolves, ravens, and the mystery of a broken brooch. Down Gloucester’s narrow streets, deep into Dogtown woods, teetering on granite cliffs and plunged into stormy North Atlantic seas, the reader is drawn into a labyrinth in which the age-old war of the sexes is given a new twist.
A spell-binding novel, "Memoirs of a Shape-Shifter" twists the eternal tension between love and power into a marvelous Celtic knot.
Forty-year-old Nikki Helmik returns to her hometown of Gloucester, Massachusetts, and falls in love with Philip, who is the son of her erstwhile mentor, the rich and beautiful Rose Eveless. Nikki's desire for the married Philip conflicts with her feminist ideals as well as with Rose's wrath, setting the younger woman on a journey of love and self-discovery. Sent on a parallel course to find and translate the spell-binding journal of her Druid ancestor Anne Cleves--presented over a self-contained span of three chapters as a first-person story of life in colonial America during the time of the Salem witch trials and beyond--Nikki is initiated into her own power and discovers a new way of loving.
Keywords:
Memoirs of a Shape-Shifter is a Harry Potter for adults, New England, late 17th century and present-day Gloucester, Massachusetts, Dogtown, forested preserve, love and relationships, women's issues including mother-daughter relationships, career paths, female mentoring, health, beauty, rape, childbirth and rearing, prostitution, religious issues such as Christianity, earth worship, tarot and Wicca, alternative religious practices including chanting, magic circles, ceremonies of welcoming and drug-induced initiation, animal-spirit worship, New England fishing industry, magic, ghosts, Irish and Celtic studies, Celtic myth, Druidism and Ogham (ogam), shamanism, shape-shifting (shapeshifting), spell casting, witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, Puritanism, the King Philip War, Native American issues including tribal life, smallpox epidemic, poetry as imagination and metaphor, relationship between words (poetry) and magic, chick lit, literary fiction, gothic romance, original novel, print publication date October 1, 2005, e-book publication date September 2010
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780971377011 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Kepler Press |
| Publication date: | 09/30/2010 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 431 |
| File size: | 771 KB |
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