Minnow
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- £7.99
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
Minnow is an otherworldly story of a small boy who leaves his dying father’s bedside hunting a medicine for a mysterious illness. Sent by his mother to a local druggist in their seaside village, Minnow unexpectedly takes a dark and wondrous journey deep into the ancient Sea Islands, seeking the grave dust of a long-dead hoodoo man to buy him a cure. With only a half-feral dog at his side, Minnow’s odyssey is haunted at every turn by the agents of Sorry George, a witch doctor who once stirred up a fever that killed fifty-two men. Meanwhile, a tempest brews out at sea, threatening to bring untold devastation to the coastal way of life. Minnow is a remarkable debut novel that evokes the fiction of Karen Russell and Matt Bell—a Lowcountry “Heart of Darkness” about the mysteries of childhood, the sacrifices we make to preserve our families, and the ghosts that linger in the Spanish moss of the South Carolina barrier islands.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A young boy's simple errand is transformed into a magical odyssey in McTeer's spellbinding debut. Minnow volunteers to go into a backwater South Carolina river town near his family's Lowcountry home to get much-needed medicine for his father. But the pharmacist doesn't have what he needs and sends Minnow to a witch doctor who, in turn, sends the young boy on a life-changing journey in which he encounters forbidden woods, fierce animals, and strangers both helpful and frightening not to mention an otherworldly encounter with a tribe that he's told is predestined. McTeer, whose story is inspired by his grandfather, a sheriff of the Lowcountry and a local witch doctor, creates a world totally different from anything Minnow has known, but his innocence and forthrightness protect him like a talisman. This is a memorable coming-of-age story brimming with unexpected encounters with man, beast, and nature, and some magic thrown in for good measure.
