Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott
The Yaga siblings—Bellatine, a young woodworker, and Isaac, a wayfaring street performer and con artist—have been estranged since childhood, separated both by resentment and by wide miles of American highway. But when they learn that they are to receive an inheritance, the siblings agree to meet—only to discover that their bequest isn’t land or money, but something far stranger: a sentient house on chicken legs.
Thistlefoot, as the house is called, has arrived from the Yagas’ ancestral home outside Kyiv—but not alone. A sinister figure known only as the Longshadow Man has tracked it to American shores, bearing with him violent secrets from the past: fiery memories that have hidden in Isaac and Bellatine’s blood for generations. As the Yaga siblings embark with Thistlefoot on a final cross-country tour of their family’s traveling theater show, the Longshadow Man follows in relentless pursuit, seeding destruction in his wake. Ultimately, time, magic, and legacy must collide—erupting in a powerful conflagration to determine who gets to remember the past and craft a new future.
An enchanted adventure illuminated by Jewish myth and adorned with lyrical prose as tantalizing and sweet as briar berries, Thistlefoot is a sweeping epic rich in Eastern European folklore: a powerful and poignant exploration of healing from multi-generational trauma told by a bold new talent.
Mythopoeic Fantasy Award Nominee for Adult Literature (2023)
Audie Award Nominee for Best Female Narrator (2023)
Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Fantasy and for Debut Novel (2022)
How These Live Book Clubs Work
Participation in the live book club includes access to a set of resources and activities as well as interactive components.
Participants receive
- A suggested reading schedule
- PDF reading guides with comprehension questions
- Vocabulary/reading activities
- Discussion board posts in our online classroom
- Writing/multimodal project prompts related to the reading
- An invitation to a live discussion
- A recording of the summary of the live discussion
- An optional feedback add-on for the final paper/project
- Rubrics for at-home feedback
Families are welcome to use as much or as little of the suggested resources and activities as they'd like to fit their interest and schedules.
Ages:
13 - 18
Dates:
November 1 - 30, 2024
Live Meeting:
There are two options for attending a live meeting for this club. An afternoon/evening option is offered to accommodate people with different schedules. Please only attend one of these meetings.
A video summary presentation will be made available for those unable to attend the live meeting. To protect participant privacy, recordings of the meetings will not be distributed to anyone who did not attend the meeting.
Note: meetings with fewer than 3 attendees may run a bit shorter depending on how participation goes.
Option 1:
December 5, 2024 (Thursday)
7:00 PM Eastern / 6:00 PM Central / 5:00 PM Mountain / 4:00 PM Pacific Time
Option 2:
December 6, 2025 (Friday)
1:00 PM Eastern / 12:00 PM Central / 11:00 AM Mountain / 10:00 AM Pacific Time
NOTE: the live meetings will be in the first week of December to accommodate for the Thanksgiving Holiday in the U.S.
Supplies:
A copy of the book (edition info here). Borrowed, used, and audio formats will work.
- Zoom account for live session
- Microphone and camera for live session (optional)
- PDF reader
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Access to printer if you want to print worksheets
Content Note:
This novel acknowledges and honors the history of victims and survivors of anti-Semitic violence and examines intergenerational trauma in a thoughtful and sensitive way that centers the lives of survivors.
For more on a reviewer’s perspective on the author’s approach to this difficult topic, see this review.
Other content includes:
Animal death, infant death, suffering, loneliness, family estrangement. Creepy magic, puppets, dark fantasy take on mythology.
Positive representation:
LGBT representation, Jewish culture representation, immigrant representation.