The
Magic of Cape Disappointment, by Julie Manthey (a novel of
magic, history, and romance)
Kay
Baker has just completed medical school at the top of her class, but
intends to open an art gallery in New York City before doing her
internship and residency requirements. A two-page back-story
identifies Kay as a fifth generation descendant of Meriwether Lewis,
of Lewis and Clark's 1805 expedition that pioneered exploration of
the Pacific Northwest. She has just now been notified that her DNA
matches with Lewis's extended family. The only logical explanation
would be that Captain Lewis took a wife from the Clatsop Indian tribe
while the expedition wintered at the mouth of the Columbia River.
Unfortunately, 400 pages of his expedition's journal have gone
missing during the ensuing 210 years.
An
hour before her art gallery is scheduled to open, her phone rings.
Astoria Medical Center in Oregon notifies her that both her parents
have just arrived by ambulance after a car crash. “We suggest you
get here as quickly as you can.”
Kay
catches the first plane to Portland, rents a car for the hundred-mile
drive to Astoria on the coast. Delayed by a freak snowstorm, she
arrives at the hospital at 2 a.m., finding her 97 year-old Gran
asleep in the ER waiting room next to a dozing young man. A doctor
tells her both parents died from their injuries soon after arrival.
This leaves Kay and her brother Louis as Gran's only living
relatives, and Louis is at sea for the next month or more. The young
man is a neighbor who found Gran wandering the village of Ilwaco, and
had guided her back to her house just before the hospital called.
Gran has dementia, requiring almost constant attention. Kay, having
made a promise to her now-deceased mother that she would never put
Gran in a nursing home, is now morally bound to stay with her for the
foreseeable future.
December
and January pass. Surrounded by the townspeople of Ilwaco Kay
gradually adapts to small town life where everyone knows everyone
else, and where many recall that Kay's mother and her failing
grandmother are
keelalles, legendary
medicine women of the Clatsop Indian tribe. Her helpful neighbor Sam
comes in for coffee one day and has a letter for her—from her
mother. Asked why he waited two months to deliver it, he puzzled her
further by saying that her mother told him to “wait until the day
after the dog bite. My dog bit you yesterday, so here it is.”
The
letter was written the day before her Mom died, and tells her to find
John Lane, the Clatsop tribal chief, who can explain the things Kay
will need to know about the old ways. “The world needs a powerful
healer,” Mom writes, “Embrace your destiny, for you are powerful
beyond measure.”
She
goes with Sam on his motorcycle to Seaside, Oregon, to meet John Lane
and the tribal council, comprised by, in real life, a computer tech, a
retired college professor, a retired lawyer and an operator of a
bed-and-breakfast.
Tribal
lore has it that every tenth generation of medicine women since the
powerful
keelalle,
Saghalie, will be empowered by the coyote spirit to influence the
weather, the power to heal, and the power to know the future.
Saghalie protected the people from the great wave of 1700, caused by
the Cascadia earthquake of that year. Her fifth generation
descendent Tamahna was the last keelalle
to have all three powers. “You, Kay, are the fifth generation after
Tamahna. The next great Cascadia quake is already overdue; it might
come any time now. Your powers are only effective within the Clatsop
tribal area. The tribal Council is glad to welcome you home.”
Her
mother had often called her the coyote girl. Kay had always thought
it was just a nickname describing her independent personality, but
now John Lane, the computer tech, says no—the coyote is the animal
that has empowered the greatest keelalles
down through the centuries. His own spirit is the raven, that of a
tribal chief.
Things
normalize somewhat over the next two months. Romance proceeds apace;
Kay's brother turns up just in time to say goodbye to Gran before she
dies peacefully. Free of responsibility for her grandmother, Kay
debates returning to a less dramatic life in New York City. But she
discovers that she now has an increasing love for all her people in
the tribal land. She decides to stay
A
few days later, the ground begins to tremble. . . .
Although
first-time author Julie Manthey needs to research natural phenomena
to make them more believable, there is nothing wrong with the magic
of her imagination. She melds love, frustration, Indian tribal lore,
history, and a spirit world that almost touches reality just off the
coast at the light house on Cape Disappointment. Good writing!
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