Product Description
On the eve of Evangeline's wedding, a dead whale is trapped in the harbor of Winter Island, the groom may be lost at sea, and Evie's mostly absent mother has shown up out of the blue. From there, in this mesmerizing, provocative debut, Evie remembers and reckons with her complicated upbringing in this lush, wild land off the coast of Southern California.
Evie grew up with her well-meaning but negligent father, surviving on the money he made dealing the island's world-famous strain of marijuana, Winter Wonderland. Although he raised her with a deep respect for the elements, the sea, and the creatures living within it, he also left her to parent herself. With wit, love, and bracing ashes of anger, Creatures probes the complexities of love and abandonment, guilt and forgiveness, betrayal and grief—and the ways in which our ability to love can be threatened if we are not brave enough to conquer the past.
Lyrical, darkly funny, and ultimately cathartic, Creatures exerts a pull as strong as the tides.
Evie grew up with her well-meaning but negligent father, surviving on the money he made dealing the island's world-famous strain of marijuana, Winter Wonderland. Although he raised her with a deep respect for the elements, the sea, and the creatures living within it, he also left her to parent herself. With wit, love, and bracing ashes of anger, Creatures probes the complexities of love and abandonment, guilt and forgiveness, betrayal and grief—and the ways in which our ability to love can be threatened if we are not brave enough to conquer the past.
Lyrical, darkly funny, and ultimately cathartic, Creatures exerts a pull as strong as the tides.
Reviews/Praise
“Some of the most heartbreaking moments in this novel are the most simply told, and there are scenes of beauty and magic and dry humor amid the chaos . . . A quietly captivating debut.” —Kirkus Starred Review
“Crissy Van Meter balances fracture and fusion and navigates Evangeline’s story with exquisite, racking grace . . . Filled with the 'pressure of missing things, the leaving of things,' and 'the constant foreboding of implosion,' Crissy Van Meter’s bold debut novel is stamped with a signature, polymetric tension all its own.”—Foreword Reviews Starred Review
“Crissy Van Meter's Creatures is a lyrical, literary debut that you'll want on your TBR when it comes to stores next winter.” —Bustle
“Van Meter's wonderfully un-ordinary debut is rather like the ocean itself: layered, deep, and happening all at once . . . This is a moving, graceful novel of how people change and are changed by natures within and without.” —Booklist
“Tender and atmospheric . . . Van Meter expertly and effortlessly brings to life at once her father’s substance abuse and dependence, his doting love for his daughter and loyalty to her absent mother, and his inability to be what Evie needs. His deep mark on Evie’s life, and her feelings toward him, are the book’s beating heart . . . this promising debut sneaks up on the reader, packing a devastating emotional punch.” —Publishers Weekly