THE WEIGHT OF FEATHERS: A Novel
By Anna-Marie McLemore
St. Martin’s Griffin
On Sale: September 15, 2015
Hardcover:
978-1-250-05865-2/ $18.99 USD
eBook:
978-1-466-87323-0 / $9.99 USD
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ABOUT THE BOOK:
The Night Circus meets Romeo and
Juliet in this stunning young adult novel about two teens who fall in
love despite the almost impossible odds against them.
The
Palomas and the Corbeaus have long been rivals and enemies, locked in
an escalating feud for over a generation. Both families make their
living as traveling performers in competing shows-the Palomas swimming
in mermaid exhibitions, the Corbeaus, former tightrope walkers,
performing in the tallest trees they can find.
Lace
Paloma may be new to her family's show, but she knows as well as anyone
that the Corbeaus are pure magia negra, black magic from the devil
himself. Simply touching one could mean death, and she's been taught
from birth to keep away. But when disaster strikes the small town where
both families are performing, it's a Corbeau boy, Cluck, who saves
Lace's life. And his touch immerses her in the world of the Corbeaus,
where falling for him could turn his own family against him, and one
misstep can be just as dangerous on the ground as it is in the trees.
EXCERPT:
THE WEIGHT OF
FEATHERS by Anna-Marie McLemore. Copyright © 2015 by the author and
reprinted by permission of Thomas Dunne Books / St. Martin’s Griffin.
The
feathers were Lace’s first warning. They showed up between suitcases, in
the trunk of her father’s station wagon, on the handles of
came-with-the-car first-aid kits so old the gauze had yellowed. They
snagged on antennas, turning the local stations to static.
Lace’s
mother found a feather in with the family’s costumes the day they
crossed into Almendro, a town named for almond fields that once filled the
air with the scent of sugary blossoms and bitter wood. But over the
last few decades an adhesive plant had bought out the farms that could
not survive the droughts, and the acres of almonds dwindled to a couple
of orchards on the edge of town.
The wisp of that black feather
caught on a cluster of sequins. Lace knew from the set to her mother’s
eyes that she’d throw the whole mermaid tail in a bucket and burn it,
elastane and all.
Lace grabbed the tail and held on. If her
mother burned it, it would take Lace and her great-aunt at least a week
to remake it. Tía Lora’s hands were growing stiff, and Lace’s were new
and slow.
Her mother tried to pull the tail from her grip, but Lace balled the fabric in her hands.
“Let go,” her mother warned.
“It’s
one feather.” Lace dug in her fingers. “It’s not them.” Lace knew the
danger of touching a Corbeau. Her abuela said she’d be better off
petting a rattlesnake. But these feathers were not the Corbeaus’ skin.
They didn’t hold the same poison as a Corbeau’s body.
“It’s
cursed,” her mother said. One hard tug, and she won. She threw the
costume tail into a bucket and lit it. The metal pail grew hot as a
stove. The fumes off the melting sequins stung Lace’s throat.
“Did you have to burn the whole thing?” she asked.
“Better safe, mija,” her mother said, wetting down the undergrowth with day-old aguas frescas so the brush wouldn’t catch.
They
could have cleaned the tail, blessed it, stripped away the feather’s
touch. Burning it only gave the Corbeaus more power. Those feathers
already had such weight. The fire in the pail was an admission that,
against them, Lace’s family had no guard.
Before Lace was born,
the Palomas and the Corbeaus had just been competing acts, two of the
only shows left that bothered with the Central Valley’s smallest towns.
Back then it was just business, not hate. Even now Lace’s family
sometimes ended up in the same town with a band of traveling singers or
acrobats, and there were no fights, no blood. Only the wordless
agreement
that each of them were there to survive, and no grudges after. Every
fall when the show season ended, Lace’s aunts swapped hot-plate recipes
with a trio of trapeze artists. Her father traded homeschooling lesson
plans with a troupe of Georgian folk dancers.
The Corbeaus never
traded anything with anyone. They shared nothing, took nothing. They
kept to themselves, only straying from the cheapest motel in town to
give one of Lace’s cousins a black eye, or leave a dead fish at the
riverbank. Lace and Martha found the last one, its eye shining like a
wet marble.
Before Lace was born, these were bloodless threats,
ways the Corbeaus tried to rattle her family before their shows. Now
every Paloma knew there was nothing the Corbeaus wouldn’t do.
Lace’s mother watched the elastane threads curl inside a shell of flame. “They’re coming,” she said.
“Did you think they wouldn’t?” Lace asked. Her mother smiled. “I can hope, can’t I?”
She
could hope all she wanted. The Corbeaus wouldn’t give up the crowds
that came with Almendro’s annual festival. So many tourists, all so
eager to fill their scrapbooks. That meant two weeks in Almendro. Two
weeks when the younger Paloma men hardened their fists, and their mothers
prayed they didn’t come home with broken ribs.
Lace’s
grandmother set the schedule each year, and no one spoke up against
Abuela. If they ever did, she’d pack their bags for them. Lace had
watched Abuela cram her cousin Licha’s things into a suitcase, clearing
her perfumes and lipsticks off the motel dresser with one sweep of her
arm. When Lace visited her in Visalia and they went swimming, Licha’s
two-piece showed that her escamas, the birthmarks that branded her a
Paloma, had disappeared.
Lace’s mother taught her that those
birthmarks kept them safe from the Corbeaus’ feathers. That family was
el Diablo on earth, with dark wings strapped to their bodies, French on
their tongues, a sprinkling of gypsy blood. When Lace slept, they went
with her, living in nightmares made of a thousand wings.
Another
black feather swirled on a downdraft. Lace watched it spin and fall. It
settled in her hair, its slight weight like a moth’s feet.
Her mother snatched it off Lace’s head. “¡Madre mía!” she cried, and threw it into the flames.
Lace’s
cousins said the Corbeaus grew black feathers right out of their heads,
like hair. She never believed it. It was another rumor that
strengthened the Corbeaus’ place in their nightmares. But the truth,
that wind pulled feathers off the wings they wore as costumes, wasn’t a
strong enough warning to keep Paloma children from the woods.
“La magia negra,” her mother said. She always called those feathers black magic.
The
fire dimmed to embers. Lace’s mother gave the pail a hard kick. It
tumbled down the bank and into the river, the hot metal hissing and
sinking.
“Let them drown,” her mother said, and the last of the rim vanished.
PRAISE
“McLemore’s prose is
ethereal and beguiling… The enchanting setup and the forbidden romance
that blooms between these two outcasts will quickly draw readers in,
along with the steady unspooling of the families’ history and mutual
suspicions in this promising first novel.” —Publishers Weekly
“Readers
beguiled by the languorous language—a striking mix of French and
Spanish phrases, wry colloquialism, lush imagery, and elevated
syntax—will find themselves falling under its spell. The third-person
narration alternates between Lace and Cluck, doling out twists and
building to a satisfying, romantic conclusion.” —Kirkus Reviews
“In
this tale of magical realism, the magic is so deftly woven into the
fabric of the story… Told with skillful poetic nuances, this
Romeo-and-Juliet story of forbidden love will entice fans of Maggie
Stiefvater’s Raven Cycle who wished for a little more romance.” —School
Library Journal
“Anna-Marie McLemore's debut novel is a
very imaginative modern-day romance akin to Romeo and Juliet and is
infused with the whimsy of magical realism.” —RT Book Reviews
“An
air of mysterious fantasy enshrouds the whole book, pulling the reader
through it as if in a spell. McLemore is a writer to watch.”—The
Guardian
“You've never read a love story quite like this
one. Anna-Marie McLemore has created in entirely imaginative world and
rich characters that will pull you in as if she's spinning magic
herself.” —Bustle
“With prose as magical as its characters, The Weight of Feathers is an exciting debut.” —Paste Magazine
“McLemore’s
debut novel has ties to Romeo and Juliet, David Almond’s mythical
Skellig, and the real-life performances of Cirque du Soleil.” —Booklist
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Anna-Marie
McLemore was born in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains and
grew up in a
Mexican-American family. She attended University of
Southern California on a Trustee Scholarship. A Lambda Literary Fellow,
she has had work featured by the Huntington-USC Institute on California
and the West, CRATE Literary Magazine's cratelit, Camera Obscura's
Bridge the Gap Series, and The Portland Review. The Weight of Feathers
is her first novel.
SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS:
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McLemore
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Martin’s Griffin
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GIVEAWAY!:
This is for 1 signed, finished copy of The Weight of Feathers.
Rules: US and Canada residents only. Winner will be chosen at random, no purchase necessary. Giveaway organized by Jude at Geeky Reading, the mailing handled by the publisher. Ends October 1st at 12:00 AM.
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