Photo Courtesy of Jaclyn Bergamino Jaclyn Bergamino (pen name Jaclyn Wilmoth) holds the paperback copy of her first novel,
The Snow Witch.
Jaclyn Bergamino, UAF Department of English MFA alumna and former Permafrost editor, will launch her first novel, The Snow Witch, at a book signing 5 to 7 p.m.
Friday, April 28, at Ursa Major Distilling. Copies will be available for purchase.
Learn more about the event here.
Bergamino writes under the pen name Jaclyn Wilmoth. She lives in the boreal forest
of Alaska, where she teaches creative writing, grows very large kohlrabi with her
husband, and tries to keep her daughter away from "no-no" mushrooms and berries. Hauling
water is her least favorite chore.
Book Description A book of spells. Memories in the snow. And nowhere to run.
Lumi thought she’d escaped her past, but when she falls in love with a man from the
far north, she leaves the safety of her life in libraries and follows him into the
mysterious world of Arctic Town, a domed city where tourists play the part of frontiersmen
and the birds watch her every move.
Lumi begins making a home in the boreal wilderness, until the snow starts falling
at autumn's end. To her dismay, each flake brings stray memories from other lives:
The plague doctor. The homesteader with blood splattered on his walls. The charging
bear with human eyes. And when Lumi finds out she is pregnant, her only escape is
a grimoire, a book of spells that she knows she must keep hidden.
But it all comes crashing down when Lumi’s log cabin home is crushed in an avalanche
and she is forced back on the run through the never-ending snow and a flood of memories
threatens to drive her mad. Out in the snow, They start coming for her -- the dark
shapes between the shadows. Driven out, hungry, and at the edge of insanity, help
comes from the least likely of allies and the memories begin to fall into place.
