Sarabande is a sharp-edged contemporary fantasy about a young woman who leaves her look-alike world of Pyrrha within the Montana mountains and undertakes a 1,650-mile journey to request a reluctant avatar's help in banishing a ghost.
Three years ago, Sarabande killed her sister Dryad in self-defense. Their knife fight on the banks of the River of Sky in the mountains along the Backbone of the World occurs near the end of The Sun Singer. While Sarabande is a sequel to The Sun Singer, it's structured to be read as a standalone, 80,000-word novel.
Life as a ghost has not improved Dryad's fiery, crafty personality. She torments Sarabande without remorse or respite. At her wit's end, Sarabande leaves her mountain home and travels from the novel's primary Glacier National Park, Montana setting to a town in central Illinois to find Robert Adams, the Sun Singer, and ask for his help.
En route, Sarabanbe is attacked by a man who does what men do in a creekbed alongside a lonely road on a night when there's no moon in the sky. She will never be the same again.
Sarabande's journey is synchronized with the phases of the moon, especially those evenings when the light withers, the dark stirs, and when the power of women and the Goddess can be most profound.
Robert, who has turned his back on magic and intends to turn his back on Sarabande as well, grudgingly agrees to return to the mountains only after the evil avatar Dohver attacks them in a serene city park.
A shaman Sarabande has never met, and must learn to trust, will help her. She also receives comfort and support from her old friend, Gem, a sorceress named Siobhan, a black horse named Sikimi, and an unexpected animal helper who appears when she is dying. Yet she alone can go deep within herself and discover how to prevail against Dohver, Dryad and the soldiers of King Justine.
As the old myths tell us, darkness is not only a realm of chaos and terror, but potentially a realm of growth and transformation. The choice is Sarabande's to make...if she can.
Sarabande's Story
Copyright (c) 2012, 2013 by Malcolm R. Campbell
a tale orchestrated by the moon
