K. B. Laugheed

Acquired Book By: I received a complimentary copy of "The Gift of the Seer" by the author K.B. Laugheed in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.

A year has passed in the life of Katie O' Toole - we began her tale in 1747 and we re-enter her life in 1748 - she's still in the midst of travelling towards Hector's homeland, with the fortitude of mind to re-trigger her memories of who she had been prior to being captured. This is part of her singular strength - of using intentional thought and purpose of heart to re-produce the person she had been as a juxtaposition to the woman she has become now. She doesn't want to 'let go' of her personhood - as she has undergone a transformation few young women in her era would have been able to endure. She is not entirely Katie O' Toole any longer but she's not quite removed from whom Katie O' Toole had once been either. Those memories of a prior life, a lifetime away from her reality now are still inside her bones; her memories are part of her own living truth.

I felt the best gift since her path crossed with Syawa and Hector is her time spent with Running Fox, as the holywoman allowed her the grace of recognising how to honour Syawa's trust in her abilities and how to bridge the gaps between the gift he wants her to bestow his people and her own awareness of her evolving enlightenment as a woman on the cusp of finding transformation within her own soul.

It never surprised me how their cultural differences affected their marriage - even in small ways, Katie and Hector were from two separate worlds. Laugheed continues to shine a light on those differences, including how Katie attempts to discuss these with Hector as they each attempt to bridge the distances between their beliefs, customs and understandings of social expectations. In this installment - it was a heady argument over the practice of polygamy vs remaining faithful to one wife and one union of marriage. In their deference, Katie was approaching this from a girl who grew up in the cultural she had and Hector was reflecting on the choices his kin would make but there was a difference between what works for a goose and what works for the gander. I had a good chuckle over how Katie's infamous red hair might have tainted her understanding of what Hector was trying to explain to her - as her temper sometimes took the best of her, which of course led them to having to have a bit of a intense fireside chat to work out the wrinkles of their misunderstandings!

I knew there was a bit of missing history between Syawa and Hector - though in truth, I hadn't quite ascertained what that missing history had been originally as the story only yielded so much revelation before I had concluded The Spirit Keeper. Now, whilst consuming the sequel, there is a new layer of illumination overlaid against the memories of the prior story - when I first read what had drawn these two together it sheds a deeper light on the heart of the story itself. Of what motivated Laugheed to tell it and why she choose to take the route she had to deliver it. It isn't that this story isn't one that hasn't been told before - it is how it is renewing a timeless tale between classes of people, the societal views of wealth and the interconnecting pieces of what unites individual humanity.

I loved seeing Katie and Hector in sublime blissitude in each other's company - it was reminding me of how they spent most of their favourite hours in the previous installment. Where they could hug inside the wider world of nature and be with one another under sky and stars. Theirs was a marriage built on mutual trust and a deep respect for each other's emotional needs. It was beautiful to see this part of their life restored after the harrowing incidents they had had to overcome. I hadn't felt they'd restore this bit of their life so soon after what they had to endure - it was almost like they were granted a second honeymoon, if they might have known what that would have meant.

My favourite new character is Syawa's mother - she has a gentle and kind spirit about her as much as she has wisdom from an eternal source of inspiration. The ways in which she interacted with Katie on first sight and meeting; the knowing way she understood what she was feeling and how she determined to accept Katie as her own daughter is what touched my heart. For her, the journey of her son's path was not just complete - he had taken a bit of a reincarnated passageway where his soul had merged into the women she was now accepting as the one who would re-fuell the purpose of her life. The moment of recognition and of maternal acceptance held a purity of joy only a mother's love can give another person - she was the key to Katie's role in this new dynamic of Hector's people.

This story has been anchoured to Katie's journey - how she views herself, how she observes the Natives and how she tries to sort out her internal world as she lives a life between the past, the present and the uncertainties of the future sparked through Syawa's vision. As we endeared ourselves to listen to Katie's internal war between what she expected out of her life and the resolute manner in which she had to augment that expectation with the reality of her life with Hector is one that is historically relatable. She had a theory of thought about what her life would become once she was back in Hector's homeland. The reality of that imaginative place was not reckoning well with the reality of his people's lives - in this, the greatest drama was her own self-loathing for her own prejudicial views about how living in a Native village is countered against the life she chose to leave. Another element of thoughtful purpose and insight from Laugheed - whose nudging the reader to see the trials of Katie's life as an everywoman caught up by love and misguided by her choices. Laugheed wants us to peel back the layers of Katie and Hector's pride and prejudicial views in order to see who they are without the false confidence of whom they could have been if they had been on firmer ground at the beginning of their lives together. Meaning - they entered into a marriage with so little information about each others' past, including their respective ideas of 'normalcy' that they truly were blinded by their unique differences when it came down to life amongst his relations.

I became so entwined into reading The Gift of the Seer, I began to savour my time with Katie and Hector; knowing full well, their story, this continuation of their journey was one I was appreciating to take again. I've grown quite a bit as a reader from my first year to my nearly sixth year as a book blogger - even as I re-read the initial passages of The Spirit Keeper, I did not shy away from some of the scenes my younger self glossed over instead. Not that they were easy to digest, those kinds of scenes are chilling and brutal for a reason but I was able to handle them in a different way than I had previously. Similarly, as I was caught inside the flow of the narrative within The Gift of the Seer, I re-experienced the alignment I had originally - where Katie's voice and word usage felt as natural to me as it had in 2013. Almost as if re-shifting back into her thoughts was as easily as recalling a former half of my readerly life; re-drawing the portrait back together and resuming where I had paused in my walk with Katie. As all of us who read are living through the character we're reading - thus, for me, I saw the growth in us both whilst I continued her story.

I cried twice before the conclusion of The Gift of the Seer - two deaths hit me in a choking sense of loss to which I couldn't resolve my feelings about whom died. One was an elder and one was a companion in fur - which gives nothing away, as this story is intergenerational - where you are privy to the entire lifespan of the characters, their children and their descendants as well as their spouses and the expansive community in whence they live. My heart tugged at me - mostly because I could relate to both deaths if countered against my own living experiences and since so much of this duology hinges closely to what we experience IRL (yet told differently and by a different lens) the emotions flow rather freely.

My tears spilt freely by the time I reached the last two pages - to where the paragraphs blurred out of readable sight - I was grieving the loss of these characters, but not in the way you might think - the grief was knowing my time with them was ending. I now felt the chasm of distance Katie had always felt herself - because time is never our friend but our companion of memory.

If I could hug a book so dearly tight it would be this one - looking back, I never would have suspected the route my life would have taken me from September 2013 to February 2019; in so many ways, I can relate to Katie's own journey because of what she says in the parting paragraphs - how it is through our adversities and our strife we gain the most; we transform through the wreck of when our lives are turnt upside down and are re-moulded again as we rise through the ashes of tribulations we can never foresee but must endure as they arrive. I am wicked thankful I was part of Book Browse in 2013 inasmuch as I am thankful I am a book blogger now in 2019. There is a thread of connection and of relevancy in everything we do - if I had not been a reviewer then, would I be a book blogger now? And, of the stories I've felt touched by and have found alight in my life - whose to say all of that wasn't writ before I acknowledge my own path evolving into the scope of my own reality? Especially considering the fact Jorie Loves A Story emerged out of a whisper of a dream I was meant to embrace?

We are our own soothsayers and our own guiding forces of reckoning - we each have an conscience and a will of strength to follow the faithfulness within us towards tomorrow. What a beautiful testament this duology became to resonate the journey all humans must take to discover their own humanity and the purpose of why we are alive.

Laugheed re-establishes our understanding of her Native characters by giving us small gestures of the truthfulness of how they lived their lives. There are customs and traditions as much as there is the craft of telling stories and of being actively conversational in order to make connections to those you've just met. I love the details she's included but also, the level of continuity from The Spirit Keeper to The Gift of the Seer - if these are the only two stories in the series (and I believe they are) - the series is a duology of dramatic Feminist Historical Fiction.

Feminist driven due to the level of hard-won courage on Katie's part and the ingenuity of leading by heart and instinct rather than of a fortitude sparked out of knowledge. Katie was traversing a culture without a rudder of understanding towards the larger scope of what their beliefs were and it was in her naivete she accomplished the most. This is another nod of how genre-bent this series is as it strikes a hearty balance between all the influences which inform its context.

Laugheed continues to be poignantly connected to nature, the natural order of life and the truths of all mankind wherein everyone can find an entry into her text. (such as the spirit within us all) This is a story that self-evolves as you read it - from one installment to the next, it is a perfected narrative of exploring the dimensions of a human soul, the emotional baggage of a lived life and the joyfulness of giving into the moment our lives bring us unexpected happiness.

Blessedly this installment is lighter in grisly scenes but I think anyone whose familiar with Native American History and the weapons available can decipher what can happen during an incident or attack. Therefore, when that scene finally arrived towards the final quarter of the novel, I was thankful Laugheed pulled back a bit even when she was writing the graphic nature of what happened in the details that were warranted in the scene. It was something I was expecting due to how The Spirit Keeper began but was hoping it would be minimal in this second half; it was and I am indebted to her as it made reading this installment far easier on my sensitive heart.

I actually had more trouble with my emotions - as it is an emotionally convicting narrative!!

// This is a quotation of my full review originally shared via jorielovesastory.com… (mais)

[Thanks to Goodreads and Plume for the ARC!]

Katie is a miserable, poor Irish immigrant living with her abusive parents in 1700s Pennsylvania. Syawa is a Native American seer, somewhat of a god, who has a vision of her and makes an incredibly long trek with his companion Hector to find her. Katie's life is turned upside down when she is taken captive (along with some family members) by these two unknown men. What seems to be a horrible situation quickly rectifies itself when Katie finds that she enjoys their company and is being treated much better than she ever was by her family. Soon, Katie, Syawa, and Hector split off from the rest of her family to journey back to Syawa's home.

I have to admit, I struggled through the first part of the book. I was battling a boring plot with no real direction, and I just could not get used to the 1700s English. When I finally got sucked into the story, I couldn't put the book down. I was sneaking pages constantly!

I do have a few qualms with the book, nothing major, but still things that stood out for me. For one, I thought Katie's change from thinking of her captors as savages to thinking of them romantically came a bit too quickly. Second, she seemed to be able to express herself in their language of gestures almost overnight, and their spoken language within weeks. Of course, it took longer for her to become fluent, but it still seemed very quick. Finally, I got fed up with Katie and Hector going back and forth explaining why they weren't good enough for each other. Just be together or don't, stop arguing about it!

All in all, it was an enjoyable book once I got past the rocky start. I laughed out loud, got a little teary, and was just generally entertained. Final rating of 3.5/5 (for the questionable beginning), rounded up to 4/5 (for the awesome rest).… (mais)

The Spirit Keeper is such a lovely, exquisite, unexpectedly touching book, that it almost left me in tears.

Katie is a poor Irish uneducated eighteen-year-old girl whose only dream in an early colonist America is to escape the drudgery of her life. Be careful what you wish for because when she is captured by a pair of Indian savages she is given the opportunity to change her life completely.

Syawa is a Seer of his tribe and he's been travelling for two years looking for the Creature of Fire and Ice who will bring the gift of Immortality to his People. When he sees Katie with her fiery red hair and clear blue eyes on a raid to the colonist farm, he knows that he at last found her and it's up the the young woman to make her choice and go on an epic journey with him and his silent and grumpy bodyguard "Hector".

Katie is completely taken with a gentle, smiling Syawa and decides to escape the misery of her living with the family which totally hates her without understanding the complexity of her decision, thinking only that Syawa wants to take her as his wife.

They go on their epic journey where every village on their way greets Syawa as a Prophet and celebrates his story of finding the Creature of Fire and Ice, and by the time Katie starts to understand the complexity of her role and her decision there is no turning back.

This is a book about a pure cultural clash, wonderful nuances of two very different languages, self-search and love. It's profound, it's tender and it's beautiful. If you are in the mood for a bit of Last of The Mohicans slash Pocahontas, go for it. It's lovely, touching and unhurried; the characterisation is gorgeous.… (mais)