"Tell me what you know about witches..."
This beautifully brazen story about modern day witches hiding in plain sight erases every tired trope and overplayed stereotype. A powerful new coven is forming in North America: six women from vastly different cultures and experiences brought together by seemingly worthless tourist tchotchkes humming with centuries old magic. Their power comes from knowing themselves, finding their voices, claiming their truths, and claiming each other as the family they deserve. But, in order for the coven to be complete, they must find their seventh. With the clock ticking and an immortal hunter closing in, they've got to find her fast. Venco is a rich blend of adventure, fantasy and feminism with a distinctly modern point of view. And all those things you thought you knew about witches...
"What we really are is a fire that can burn down the system that holds us...that keeps us small and struggling."
This book is a wild ride that will have you feeling all of your rage and all of your power.
— Nicole"Once I opened VenCo, I was propelled through an entire night of charmed reading. Cherie Dimaline creates a world utterly fantastical, yet real. VenCo is funny, tense, and cracking with a dark, divine energy." ---Louise Erdrich, New York Times bestselling author ofThe Sentence
For fans of The Once and Future Witches and Practical Magic, comes an incredibly imaginative, highly anticipated new novel featuring witches, magic, and a road trip across America--from Cherie Dimaline, the critically acclaimed author of Empire of Wild.
"Crackling with magic, mystery, adventure, and intrigue, VenCo is a captivating tribute to the bonds of families we are born into and the ones that we create, and a delightful testament to the power of all womankind."-- Nikki Erlick, New York Times bestselling author of The Measure
M tis millennial Lucky St. James is barely hanging on when she learns she'll be evicted from the tiny Toronto apartment she shares with her cantankerous but loving grandmother Stella. But then one night, something strange and irresistible calls out to Lucky. She burrows through a wall to find a tarnished silver spoon, humming with otherworldly energy, etched with a crooked-nosed witch and the word SALEM.
Lucky is familiar with the magic of her indigenous ancestors, but she has no idea that the spoon connects her to a teeming network of witches across North America who have anxiously awaited her discovery.
Enter VenCo, a front company fueled by vast resources of dark money (its name is an anagram of "coven.") VenCo's witches hide in plain sight wherever women gather: Tupperware parties, Mommy & Me classes, suburban book clubs. Since colonial times, they have awaited the moment the seven spoons will come together and ignite a new era, returning women to their rightful power.
But as reckoning approaches, a very powerful adversary is stalking their every move. He's Jay Christos, a roguish and deadly witch-hunter as old as witchcraft itself.
To find the last spoon, Lucky and Stella embark on a rollicking and dangerous road trip to the darkly magical city of New Orleans, where the final showdown will determine whether VenCo will usher in a new beginning...or remain underground forever.
A wildly imaginative and compulsively readable fantasia of adventure, history, Americana, feminism, and magic, VenCo is a novel only the supremely gifted Cherie Dimaline could write.