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Starwallow
Questions of home, distilled by travel, gallop like a mare on spring grass through the second novel in Renée Carrier’s Riven Country series. After suffering self-blame for decades, will Senga Munro at last permit a sense of belonging? when cherishing one’s soul ceases to be academic and becomes truth? First-person narration will signify a hard-won sensibility.
STARWALLOW is set (mostly) in contemporary Wyoming. It opens with Senga winding an old French clock as her Danish lover photographs her. They are collaborators on a series he names “Intuitive Portraits.”
Outlaws, dealing pain and misery through human trafficking, meth and overt racism, evade capture, to return to their back-country hide-out for stashed funds. One of them, Dale (who has earned Senga’s scorn in Book One), wants to keep his little brother out of jail and they flee on their own. Once a captive, Larissa Ivanovich and her child shelter at a local safe house, while her Russian brother arrives to collect them after a five-year absence.
Anchoring the novel is Senga’s home, Starwallow. Interest grows in “biological imperatives,” as she and her friends consider their respective fields of dreams from their abodes, be it Starwallow, or a Wyoming guest ranch; her lover’s home in the Hills, or her neighbors’ sheep operation. We catch up with the not-so-simple simpler, teaching an herbal workshop and practicing her late healer Grannie’s mantra of “usefulness. Circumstance will later test Senga’s healing skills.
Travel to Italy reunites loved ones, as Senga accompanies her neighbor, Gabe Belizaire, to meet his fiancée’s family. Senga’s long-lost relative hears whispers on the wind and consults angels, disguised as wall windows, as Gabe embraces the happiness of being loved for himself and for whom he loves. He also discovers his last name on a white WWII grave stone, identifying the remains of a U.S. Army Buffalo Soldier from the African American regiment. On the flight home, an event in the night sky brings the “root digger” a crucial insight.
Senga sees what others can’t. Threads of magic realism from Book One weave through Europe and Indian Country. The 1800’s Cheyenne, High Wolf, and his family, bend time and space with twenty-first century Wyoming.
“And what did the mermaid desire, more than anything in the world?” her lover riddles at the end. How will Senga respond?
As Senga states in the epilogue, “We may let go of everything but our own hearts.”
STARWALLOW is set (mostly) in contemporary Wyoming. It opens with Senga winding an old French clock as her Danish lover photographs her. They are collaborators on a series he names “Intuitive Portraits.”
Outlaws, dealing pain and misery through human trafficking, meth and overt racism, evade capture, to return to their back-country hide-out for stashed funds. One of them, Dale (who has earned Senga’s scorn in Book One), wants to keep his little brother out of jail and they flee on their own. Once a captive, Larissa Ivanovich and her child shelter at a local safe house, while her Russian brother arrives to collect them after a five-year absence.
Anchoring the novel is Senga’s home, Starwallow. Interest grows in “biological imperatives,” as she and her friends consider their respective fields of dreams from their abodes, be it Starwallow, or a Wyoming guest ranch; her lover’s home in the Hills, or her neighbors’ sheep operation. We catch up with the not-so-simple simpler, teaching an herbal workshop and practicing her late healer Grannie’s mantra of “usefulness. Circumstance will later test Senga’s healing skills.
Travel to Italy reunites loved ones, as Senga accompanies her neighbor, Gabe Belizaire, to meet his fiancée’s family. Senga’s long-lost relative hears whispers on the wind and consults angels, disguised as wall windows, as Gabe embraces the happiness of being loved for himself and for whom he loves. He also discovers his last name on a white WWII grave stone, identifying the remains of a U.S. Army Buffalo Soldier from the African American regiment. On the flight home, an event in the night sky brings the “root digger” a crucial insight.
Senga sees what others can’t. Threads of magic realism from Book One weave through Europe and Indian Country. The 1800’s Cheyenne, High Wolf, and his family, bend time and space with twenty-first century Wyoming.
“And what did the mermaid desire, more than anything in the world?” her lover riddles at the end. How will Senga respond?
As Senga states in the epilogue, “We may let go of everything but our own hearts.”
Kindle Edition
Published June 21, 2020
About the author
Renée Carrier
10 books5 followersTHE EARTH IS HER OWN, the riveting conclusion to Carrier's Riven Country series (a quartet) is available as an e-book and in paperback. What began with THE RIVEN COUNTRY OF SENGA MUNRO, the story of a wounded healer, nudged by the Universe, set mostly in Wyoming, proceeded with the second in the series, STARWALLOW, exploring the distance between home and the journey necessary to come home to oneself. THE SIMPLER, Book III, examines obsession and madness, whether in Paris, France, a manor in Ireland, Wyoming's Black Hills. The last poses the question, what exactly is Senga? Her captivity in a deep cave beneath Devils Tower leads to an unforeseen future, for one who sees what others cannot.
Renée's nonfiction work, CROFTER, A Wyoming Homestead Manual and Radical Memoir, Rooted in Place, is available as an E-Book, paperback, and hardback. CROFTER describes life on a small rural homestead, disguised as pages of a manual. Amended by recollections of her Air Force childhood, she stretches memory decades into the now.
As a child, Renée lived in France and five Southern states, “migrating” to Wyoming at eighteen to attend the university where she earned a B.A in French. "Having lived in rural Wyoming for decades, I remain its student of place."
A memoir, A SINGULAR NOTION, was published in 2006 by the Higher Shelf imprint of Pronghorn Press. In 2010 she compiled, edited, and published her fighter-pilot father's early aviation memoir as a short run. Currently out of print, a second edition is planned.
The author and her husband, a retired school superintendent, tend an apple farm, a garden, and raise garlic and herbs—medicinal and culinary. Two children and three grandchildren live out of state. Renée is a past recipient of the Frank Neilson Doubleday Writing Award by the Wyoming Arts Council. She continues to sing and play the odd musical performance and practice family herbalism, which wends its way into her writing "like a possessed vine." She enjoys knitting, walking, reading, viewing good films, and traveling.
Renée's nonfiction work, CROFTER, A Wyoming Homestead Manual and Radical Memoir, Rooted in Place, is available as an E-Book, paperback, and hardback. CROFTER describes life on a small rural homestead, disguised as pages of a manual. Amended by recollections of her Air Force childhood, she stretches memory decades into the now.
As a child, Renée lived in France and five Southern states, “migrating” to Wyoming at eighteen to attend the university where she earned a B.A in French. "Having lived in rural Wyoming for decades, I remain its student of place."
A memoir, A SINGULAR NOTION, was published in 2006 by the Higher Shelf imprint of Pronghorn Press. In 2010 she compiled, edited, and published her fighter-pilot father's early aviation memoir as a short run. Currently out of print, a second edition is planned.
The author and her husband, a retired school superintendent, tend an apple farm, a garden, and raise garlic and herbs—medicinal and culinary. Two children and three grandchildren live out of state. Renée is a past recipient of the Frank Neilson Doubleday Writing Award by the Wyoming Arts Council. She continues to sing and play the odd musical performance and practice family herbalism, which wends its way into her writing "like a possessed vine." She enjoys knitting, walking, reading, viewing good films, and traveling.
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