Description: "Orchid Lovell is a young Romani woman haunted by a fear of being found out. Her family has been chased out of town before. After settling in a seemingly idyllic northern mining town that she soon understands as rife with unseen violence, Orchid finds solace in a lush orchid fen where she doesn't fear the town's judgment. Amid the green beauty of the fen, Orchid meets her beloved Jack, and marries him in a secret blackfly-infested ceremony. But the fen doesn't only harbor life. Here, dead girls take revenge on the men who murdered them, luring them into murky waters. Despite the dead's relentlessness, one man evades the panni raklies. After a devastating attack linked to the expansion of the mine, Orchid's fate is entwined with the panni raklies' ruthless justice"--
Brief description:
Lynn Hutchinson Lee was first place winner of the 2022 Joy Kogawa Award for Fiction. Her writing is published in Room, Weird Horror, Fusion Fragment, Northern Nights (Undertow Publications), Prairie Fire's 50 Over 50, Guernica's This Will Only Take a Minute (winning the Editor's Choice Award), and elsewhere. She is co-editor of Through the Portal: Tales From a Hopeful Dystopia (Exile Editions). Following Origins of Desire in Orchid Fens, her novel Nightshade, shortlisted for the 2023 Guernica Prize, will be released by Assembly Press in 2026. She lives in Toronto with her partner. Visit her at www.lynnhutchinsonlee.ca.
Review Quotes:
"The prose is sensuous and lyrical, saturated with earthy, evocative enchantment ... In the powerful and intimate novel Origins of Desire in Orchid Fens, a bold, loving heroine confronts racism, sexism, and classism" - Foreword Reviews
"Lynn Hutchinson Lee invites the reader into a ritual of memory crucial to our heritage and Romani identity." - Frances Roberts Reilly, author of Parramisha: A Romani Poetry Collection and Contributor to Critical Romani Studies Journal, Central European University
"Lynn Hutchinson Lee's novella leads us through a decadently aromatic world: notes of orchids, chanterelle mushrooms and plush moss; sterilized and burned bedsheets abound. Just out of frame, girls long-dead slip past us, organza-like. A dizzying and beautiful debut, Origins of Desire in Orchid Fens explores life as a Romany woman in Canada, and the flowers that refuse to die amidst the decaying world of capitalism." - Daisuke Shen, author of Vague Predictions & Prophecies (Clash Books) and Funeral (Kernpunkt Press)