The Witch of Tin Mountain by Paulette Kennedy
In the Ozark Mountains, three generations of women are bound by blood and power. An evil that has stalked them for decades also does. 1931. While assisting her adoptive grandmother with her treatments, Gracelynn Doherty lives in peace on Tin Mountain. The superstitious townspeople continue to seek the women out, whether to treat arthritis or a broken heart, despite rumours that they are witches. However, when evangelist Josiah Bellflower arrives in town and makes promises of miraculous healing, full tummies, and prosperity, his revivals quickly capture Tin Mountain and put Granny in mortal fear.
Josiah is recognized by Granny. She made a dreadful pledge fifty years ago, in a dark and desperate moment. An adversary named Josiah has now come back to get his money. Gracelynn must decide whether to leave Tin Mountain and the only family she knows or confront the spiteful preacher whose wicked mission it is to destroy her as Granny grows ill and the drought-stricken region is cursed.
The Witch of Tin Mountain by Paulette Kennedy
Amazon.com
This book is a wonderful work of art by a writer who actually understands how to write moral fiction. Kennedy excels at using her rich prose to vividly illustrate the characters, scenes, and tales. She also clearly identifies the moral values she upholds and aesthetically illustrates them via the words and deeds of the characters. This isn’t just pulp fiction; it’s also not a soap opera or mindless action scenes from a computer game. She chooses to address important issues like sexual orientation and societal discrimination against it, and she effectively launches a broadside at institutional Christianity.
She does include a warning that the book contains strong triggering themes, such as numerous strong sexual themes, homophobia, abortion, murder, and others, for readers who desire to avoid these subjects. Of course, anyone offended by such content may simply choose not to read the book.
Fiction is art, that is, the concrete expression of moral ideas and value judgments with the purpose of spreading these concepts to others When the author’s concepts and moral standards resonate with the reader, fiction can easily be recognized as “art.” This is the distinction between literature that engages your thoughts, feelings, and moral judgments and fiction that are only supposed to be entertaining.
To vividly show and contrast the moral concepts being discussed, the characters are highly idealized and may even be considered “stereotypical.” This is true even if the reader disagrees with the ideas and standards depicted in the artwork, in this example a novel, because their moral standards differ from the author’s. A truly effective novel may have the effect of boosting the reader’s understanding and grasp of the moral themes being represented in the story, in addition to providing the author with initial creative fulfilment.
In this book, heterosexual male-female relationships are starkly contrasted with love and sex between people of the same sex. The two most powerful female lead protagonists and their partners have a caring, compassionate, and uplifting love. Of different races, the two minor protagonist boys share the same loving, caring, and contented relationship. Every heterosexual contact is portrayed as hurried, inconsiderate, and/or unpleasant. A parent who is heterosexual is molesting his child.
A second man is sexist and essentially a rapist. It is impossible to overstate how starkly heterosexual partnerships differ from LG relationships. This is not a flaw in the narrative; rather, it is exactly the objective of moral fiction, which aims to unmistakably represent a specific viewpoint.
The Witch of Tin Mountain by Paulette Kennedy is a fascinating and compelling story, but it’s worth looking closer at the title. You see, Tin Mountain’s witches might not all be the same. This location, which serves as the author’s well-researched and vivid setting in the Ozarks, is filled with the paranormal, is rich in local history and stories, and has locations that everyone knows are cursed. The timeline of Kennedy’s book bounces back and forth, picking up where the histories of the heroines—who are related by both ability and lineage—left off. The three primary protagonists all make their individual historical debuts as young women.
When Anneliese, Deirdre, and Gracelynn confront a variation of the same persistent demonic presence that seeks to deepen and extend its depravity through betrayal and impregnation, they do so fifty years apart, starting in the nineteenth century and ending in the Great Depression. The tale is made up of their interactions with this man, this evil force. In this book, Kennedy’s heroines all have ties to herbal therapy and tradition. They are trusted—and also feared—by the neighbours they care for through illness or adversity or, in the instance of one heroine, through the practice of midwifery. These generations of women could be referred to as “white witches” by some.
They are capable of reading the natural world, making potions, and occasionally seeing things in visions. These women are also strong and tenacious. They also pass down a secret, prized book of knowledge from generation to generation known as a magical grimoire, which they only reveal to outsiders at their own peril.
