The Chalk Canoe: A Cat McCloud Book

A Cat McCloud Book. A coming-of-age thriller. Magical realism meets suburban gothic humor in the tragicomic realm of puberty. In the lakeside town of White Rock the bare lips of one girl must never touch the bare lips of another. But the summer of 1973 Cat McCloud falls in love with the new girl and is sucked into a maelstrom of witchcraft, time-travel, and adolescent passion. Cat has a longing for boys and girls, a ripe imagination, and an affinity with nature. The trees whisper secrets, untold myths flower, and the sparkling lake holds her childhood wishes. But Cat is paralyzed by the weight of her unlived life. Then comes the new girl, Dee-dee Morton. Dee-dee does not follow rules. Dee-dee has a head of wild hair, a cigar box full of magic, and an ancient Egyptian mummy on her bed. Cat is smitten. Coaxed by Dee-dee's throaty whisper, Cat finds cracks in the suburban perfection of White Rock and wildness on the far side of Little Rose Lake. Here hides the town's bloody past. Here rusty barbed wire rises from the sand. Here fish heads are nailed to the trees, a killer lurks under the muck, a poison pen stuffs mailboxes with venom, and yellowed letters of love and murder emerge from the town's spidery cracks.

On Dee-dee's sixteenth birthday, the Ouija board warns, STOP MEDDLING IN WHAT YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND. But Cat and Dee-dee do not heed. They dive into ever-riskier adventures: shoplifting, potion brewing, and taboo embraces. One hot August sleepover, between sips of liqueur and the poems of Sappho, something horrific happens down in Dee-dee's basement. This thing cannot be undone. Is it the venom of the Poison Pen? Or the hand of a passing stranger? Or was it Dee-dee? Dee-dee goes silent. Cat goes numb. The mummy is thrown the trash. The shadow of the Midwestern winter advances. Under the snow, an ancient curse molders, and a long-hidden monster grows under the muck. Meanwhile Cat fills her house with failed perfection, in the form of tiny canoes carved from sticks of chalk. Come summer, Cat must abandon her canoes, face the beast under the muck, and undo the ancient curse, or die in the deepest waters of Little Rose.

The Chalk Canoe, Heidi Arneson's darkly-comic prequel to her suburban gothic thriller, Interlocking Monsters, explores in rich and luxurious prose the tangible and mythical forces at work in Cat's quest to live beyond her hilariously imaginative adolescence. Arneson's driving humor and skillful suspense propel her shy heroine into natural catastrophes, forbidden love, and the enchanted underbelly of suburbia, where death waits around every corner.

"A magic garden of uncanniness" Author Jon Spayde, How to Believe

"Beautifully vivid, passionate and heartbreaking, The Chalk Canoe takes us into the confidences of two young women as they perch on the threshold of adulthood. " Author Jenna Zark, The Beat on Ruby's Street

"Color me bedazzled" Journalist Noel Holston, Like the Dew

"Heidi Arneson's prose is graphic and striking. She builds suspense, and explores sexuality and standards of normality with incisive humor, revealing the narrator Cat's most secret thoughts and desires, and tackling serious teenage issues." Tessa Bridal, Author, The Tree of Red Stars and River of Painted Birds

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Stick Pony Press
Published: 05/02/2019
ISBN: 9780997477818
Pages: 172
Weight: 0.57lbs
Size: 9.02h x 5.98w x 0.40d