![]() ![]() Also of Sami descent, Laestadius (1800-1861), his wife Brita Kajsa, and the Sami woman Milla Clementsdottir, whose influence led to the pastor’s conversion, are all historical figures, but in the novel Laestadius’s powers of observation as a botanist also translate seamlessly and convincingly into those of a detective. The pastor’s uncompromising fervour and stand against the drunkenness that blights his parishioners’ lives have already gained him enemies, but when it becomes clear just how much Laestadius has discovered about the evil stalking the community, his becomes an existential struggle with the powers of darkness, in which Jussi is a vulnerable target for the pastor’s enemies. The novel is narrated by Jussi, the young Sami boy Laestadius rescued from starvation and abuse, and whom he teaches to read and write. ![]() However, as far as the drunken and boorish Sheriff Brahe is concerned, when a bear is caught and killed, the case is closed. The revivalist pastor and botanist, Lars Levi Laestadius, the possessor of a scientific eye and a forensic sense of smell, has a different theory and the evidence to prove it. ![]() When her body is found, it bears what appear to be the marks of a bear’s claws, and the hunt is on. ![]() Review by Deborah Bragan-Turner (trans.) Katherine Mezzacappaġ852: A young girl disappears from the remote community of Pajala in northern Sweden, near the border with Finland. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |