GennaRose Nethercott’s book THE LUMBERJACK’S DOVE was selected by Louise Glück as a winner of the National Poetry Series for 2017. She is also the lyricist behind the narrative song collection MODERN BALLADS, and is a Mass Cultural Council Artist Fellow. Her work has appeared widely in journals and anthologies including BOMB, The Massachusetts Review, The Offing, and PANK, and she has been writer-in-residence at the Shakespeare & Company bookstore, Art Farm Nebraska, and The Vermont Studio Center, among others. A born Vermonter, she tours nationally and internationally composing poems-to-order for strangers on a 1952 Hermes Rocket typewriter.
Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott
2023’s Thistlefoot, by GennaRose Nethercott, is one of my favorite reads of 2024. This literary fantasy draws from Jewish and Eastern European folktales, with a concretely modern setting, a gloss of mythic American West (hobos and tumbleweeds), and sentences that sing with poetry.
Isaac Yaga is a street performer and a con artist. He can impersonate almost anyone, and he is always on the run, either from the people whose pockets he’s picked, or from his own guilty memories, accompanied only by a small black cat named Hubcap.
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Do it! One of the best things I've read in recent years.
This reminds me. I want to read Addie LaRue.
We’re in total agreement David!
I felt just the same. The prose and character work was excellent. The larger story was unsatisfying, especially compared to…
Hmmm. I think I'll pass.