Grey Isles — (1980-1989) Publisher: The Sorceress who waits, the Beast who bars the path, the star that never perishes, the Broken Tower where the last answer lies. They fled to the White City after the sea rose to destroy the unfinished circle of stones. Now the Old Gods stir once again and a young man sets off in search of the knowledge that may bind the Gods and be the salvation of his people.
  
 The Sarsen Witch
Since her family was killed by the invading horse lords, Naeri has lived a wild and solitary existence, surviving on what she can scrounge or steal. But when she is caught trying to steal a pig, she is caught back up again in “civilized” life. She falls in love with Gwi, a kindly smith, and rediscovers a long-lost cousin, the minstrel Daui, who senses in Naeri a gift for geomancy. Then she catches the eye of the local warlord, Ricca, who believes she will bring him good fortune and that her earth-magic abilities can help him build a great monument to immortalize himself.
The Sarsen Witch takes place in Bronze Age Britain and centers on the building of Stonehenge and how it affects the horse tribes and the Goddess-worshiping peoples they have conquered. We see these events through the eyes of Naeri, who begins as something of a pawn and develops strength as the novel progresses. It can be frustrating watching her get pushed around, but it’s really gratifying when she does grow a backbone. She must strike a difficult balance between duty and emotion, and between her wish to help her own people and her determination to honor the vows she has made.
The theme feels a bit dated now, since at this point there are many novels exploring the possible conflict between patriarchal and matriarchal tribes in prehistory. 1989, though, was a different landscape altogether. And Eileen Kernaghan presents an unusually nuanced view of the subject matter. The story suggests that a “live and let live” peace is at least theoretically possible, if extremely difficult and unlikely. Ricca, who could easily have been a one-dimensional lout, is surprisingly complex as well, especially when considering the brevity of the novel. (The 1989 edition of The Sarsen Witch weighs in at 217 pages.)
I recommend The Sarsen Witch to readers who enjoyed Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon; in fact, it’s easy to imagine Naeri and Morgaine inhabiting the same semi-fictional universe, albeit separated by many centuries. Kernaghan brings to life a time about which little is known, and illuminates it with beautiful language:
It was the Winter Queen who, by custom, led the women of Ricca’s camp. Naeri had danced like this as a child in the hills, under the white stars and the hunting moon. The pulse of the drums was in her blood; her body swayed, her feet moved in remembered rhythms. The reed-pipes made a high, sweet music, clear and silvery; moon-music. In her head the mead sang like the pipes; her blood pounded in time to the drum’s insistent throbbing. There were two great circles now, spinning in opposite directions. Faces were blurred ovals flashing past her as she whirled and stamped. Winter-bride, moon-dancer, she leaped like the flames on the hill, swayed like a young rowan in the wind.
—Kelly Lasiter
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Stand-alone novels:
Dance of the Snow Dragon — (1995) Young adult. Publisher: Dance of the Snow Dragon is an engrossing tale of spiritual develpment and magical wonder set in the Buddhist enclaves of the Himalayas.
The Snow Queen — (2000) Young adult. Publisher: Winner of the 2001 Aurora Award for Best Long Form Work in English! In this reworking of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, the magical worlds of Saami shamanism and the Kalevala coexist with the polite Victorian society of nineteenth-century Scandanavia. At a time when traditional faith is challenged by modern science, the old  pagan gods still haunt the northern forests. Kernaghan blends fantasy and historical realism to create an enchanting, provocative story that will inspire readers of all ages.
 The Snow Queen
The Snow Queen arrived on my doorstep on an unseasonably cold March day. I grabbed a blanket, curled up in my favorite chair, and read the book in a matter of a few hours. The Snow Queen is a short novel, a single-sitting book if you’re a fast reader like me, yet more enchanting than many longer works. Nothing is superfluous here; Eileen Kernaghan tells the story she has come to tell — a mythic reworking of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale of the same name — and that's it.
The enchantment begins with the lovely cover, graced with an illustration drawn from a 1913 book of fairy tales. Then, in the first paragraph, I was taken back to my childhood storybooks as Gerda and Kai sat among the flowerboxes, conversing across the narrow space between their townhouses. The setting is homey and familiar, both to the characters and to readers who grew up with this fairy tale, but all is not well. Kai has grown snobbish and callous, insulting Gerda's poetry as "childish." He has set aside poetry and dreams for the coldly logical world of mathematics. And now a stranger, the mysterious Baroness Aurore, has come to town. Kai is quite taken with her, and she takes him on a long journey. He does not return.
Gerda, worried, sets off to find him, but the journey proves much longer and more difficult than expected. Along the way she is robbed and taken in by the robber-girl, Ritva, who has a story of her own. Ritva is a shaman-in-training who isn't so sure she wants her mystical talents and longs to run away from her family. When Gerda resumes her adventure, Ritva goes with her. Ritva is as street-smart and cynical as Gerda is trusting and naive, and they butt heads at first, but in the end they forge a wonderful bond. Neither of them could accomplish this mission without the other, and they face the Snow Queen as a powerful team. I long for a sequel; the ending leaves me wondering what Gerda and Ritva do with the lives that lie ahead of them, and whether Kai ever grows up.
The Snow Queen is a wonderful book, blending Andersen’s tale with Finnish myth and legend, and emphasizing the young-woman-coming of-age and female-friendship themes above all. It’s true enough to the original tale that it feels like rediscovering a lost treasure from childhood, yet it’s a rediscovery through new eyes. —Kelly Lasiter
 Winter On the Plain of Ghosts: A Novel of Mohenjo-daro — (2004) Publisher: A tale of sorcery, religious conflict, political intrigue and ecological disaster in the lost cities of the Indus Valley, circa 2000 BC.
 The Alchemist's Daughter — (2004) With R P Macintyre. Publisher: The enchantment and mystery of Renaissance Elizabethan England and the threat of the Spanish Armada serve as the backdrop for this tale of natural magic, alchemy and scrying. What is endorsed is the classical quest, and archetype heroic pattern. Kernahan’s use of real historical figures like Humphrey Gilbert and William Shakespeare, blended with original and unforgettable fictional characters add to the rich detail, while her impeccable research allow this novel to travel beyond its initial young adult audience. The language components are uncompromising, and although there is a familiar feel of a young protagonist (Sidonie Quince) and her reluctance to use her gifts (seeing the future), the archetype plot of saving her father and her country is reinvented with great power.
Wild Talent: A Novel of the Supernatural — (2009) Young adult. Publisher: Wild Talent: a Novel of the Supernatural is the strange tale of Jeannie Guthrie, a sixteen-year-old Scottish farm worker, who possesses a frightening talent. Believing that she has unintentionally killed her ne'er-do-well cousin, her fear of being sentenced as a witch propels her to flee her home to London. There, Guthrie is befriended by the free-spirited and adventurous Alexandra David, and introduced to Madame Helena Blavatsky's famous salon where she begins to understand the source of her strange powers.
With detailed action sequences Kernaghan engages her readers as Jeannie and Alexandra venture from the late Victorian world of spiritualists and theosophists; to the fin de siecle Paris of burgeoning artists, anarchists and esoteric cults; and finally to the perilous country of the Beyond.
It is against these eerie late 19th century backdrops that Kernaghan weaves an  accessible tale of myth and magic, while at the same time addressing the serious and relevant issues of trust, conviction, and power.
Wild Talent
While Wild Talent is very different from Eileen Kernaghan's 2000 novel, The Snow Queen, there are two major themes that the two novels have in common. Both feature young girls striking out precipitously on their own into an unsafe world. Both also address the frustrations of intelligent women up against the repressive mores of Victorian society. The result, in both cases, is a gently feminist coming-of-age tale with a strong sense of place and time.
Wild Talent tells the story of Jeannie Guthrie, a young Scottish farm girl who flees her home suddenly, fearing charges of witchcraft and murder after a telekinetic talent helps her fight off a would-be rapist. She reaches London, where she befriends Alexandra David and finds employment with Helena Blavatsky. The historical characters are fascinating, and Jeannie herself is delightfully complex — unusually courageous in some ways and so very unsure in others.
The greatest strength of Wild Talent is its vivid portrayal of the tumultuous times in which Jeannie lives. The drudgery of rural poverty, the decadence of absinthe-soaked artists, the glamour of the Paris world's fair, and the spiritual debates among London's occult circles are all handled with skill. When I finished Wild Talent I felt that I'd paid a visit to the late 19th century, that I'd been right there with Jeannie all along.
Also well-handled were the questions of what is “real” and what is not. The book is teeming with the supernatural — some of it real, some of it staged by charlatans, some of it in that gray area of uncertainty where the reader isn't sure whether it's real or a dream.
There's a spot toward the middle of the book that was rough going in a way, and ironically, it's because of something Kernaghan did very, very well. As the reader, I was feeling a little adrift and not sure whether the story was moving, and then a little light bulb went on over my head and I realized it was because Jeannie felt adrift and wasn't sure whether she was getting anywhere. Alone in London, with her fondest dream postponed for the sake of day-to-day survival, Jeannie is understandably depressed. Kernaghan's portrayal of Jeannie's depression is true to life and really made me feel for the character.
The ending leaves open the question of whether Jeannie achieves her goal of becoming a writer — but as I remembered her musings at the beginning of the book about the power of words, I realized that the novel's text itself was meant to be the answer. Well played.
—Kelly Lasiter |
Eileen Kernaghan grew up on a dairy farm in Canada. While her contemporaries read Nancy Drew, she was lost in the worlds of Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, A. Merritt, and Jack Vance. The moment she stumbled across those yellowing pulp magazines, her future career was decided.
She conducts writing workshops in the Vancouver BC area, and used to run a used bookstore. Ms. Kernaghan has three grown children and four grandchildren, and lives near Vancouver with her husband and an eccentric cat. Read excerpts of her novels at Eileen Kernaghan's website. She also keeps a blog.
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