Scent of Darkness: A Novel

In her best-selling debut, Hothouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire, Margot Berwin brought us to the rain forests of Mexico—to a land of shamans, spirit animals, and snake charmers—in the search for nine rare and valuable plants. Now, with her hotly anticipated second novel, Berwin takes us somewhere darker: deep into the bayous of Louisiana, to a world of fortune-tellers, soothsayers, and potent elixirs. Scent of Darkness is a magical, seductive story about the power of scent, and about what happens when a perfume renders a young woman irresistible. Evangeline grows up understanding the extraordinary effects of fragrance. Her grandmother Louise is a gifted aromata, a master of scent-making and perfume. When Eva was a girl, Louise carefully explained that lavender under her pillow would make her dream of the man she would marry; eucalyptus would make her taller; almandine, fatter; and jasmine, Louise promised, would wrap her life in a mystery. When Eva is eighteen, Louise leaves her the ultimate gift—a scent created just for her. The small perfume vial is accompanied by a note in Louise’s slanted script: “Do not remove the stopper, Evangeline, unless you want everything in your life to change.”  From the moment Eva places a drop—the essence of fire, leather, rose, and jasmine—on her neck, men dance closer to her, women bury their noses deep into her hair, even the cats outside her bedroom cry to be near her. After a lifetime spent blending into the background, Eva is suddenly the object of intense desire to everyone around her. Strangers follow her down the street; a young boy appears at her door asking for a favor; and two men, one kind and good, the other dark and seductive, fall deeply, madly in love with her. As her greatest gift becomes an unbearable curse, Eva must uncover the secret of her scent and the message her grandmother, the woman who loved her most, wanted to tell her.  A bewitching tale of love, blood, power, and magic, Scent of Darkness is a wildly inventive novel that will seduce the reader’s every sense.This ebook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.

From Booklist

Berwin follows Hothouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire (2009) with a tale about the mysterious and luscious world of the aromata, professional perfume makers. Evangeline, Eva for short, loves spending the summer with her aromata grandmother, Louise, who works in a closed, empty room, trying to capture the scent of things like joy or shadows. Sometimes she is even successful in these efforts, but she will never share her secrets. When she dies, Louise leaves her house to 18-year-old Eva, who finds a handsome local med student, Gabriel, studying in the kitchen. As they explore the rambling house together, Eva grows more enamored of Gabriel every day. He finally convinces her to go into Louise’s sanctuary, the room where she made her scents, where Eva finds a gift for herself, a scent all her own. But a note warns her that if she removes the stopper, everything will change. The unexpected soon follows. Berwin’s prose is poetic and measured, and her enchanting novel will leave readers searching for a scent of their own. --Amber Peckham

The Washington Post

“Sumptuous. . . . A story of first love, obsession, youthful sexuality and coming of age.”

The New York Journal of Books

“To give away the twists and turns in Scent of Darkness . . . would certainly be unfair, for Scent of Darkness is thoroughly engrossing.”

Entertainment Weekly

“Boys, you give them your heart and they just want to sniff your blood.”

Amber Peckham, Booklist

“Berwin’s prose is poetic and measured, and her enchanting novel will leave readers searching for a scent of their own.”

Bette-Lee Fox, Library Journal

“Berwin’s Creole-flavored romance . . .will provide plenty of pleasure to readers who enjoy a touch of magical realism in their fiction. Fans of such atmospheric writers as Alice Hoffman will find much to enjoy here.”

Amber Castens, The News-Gazette

“In Scent of Darkness, Berwin has created a compelling story surrounded by the mysterious and exotic world of New Orleans, where tarot cards foretell what’s yet to be, and fragrance is viewed as an ethereal, mystical creation capable of changing one’s life forever.”

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1 My name is Eva, from the longer and more beautiful Evangeline. I had something very special once, something that I took for granted and lost. I set out to find it again, and as so often happens, it was right there in front of me. Or should I say it was right there inside of me, running through my veins like a blessing, or a plague.***Jasmine smells like human flesh. Mix it with cumin, which smells like sweat, and you have the scent of sex. If you spread it on your body, watch out, you’ll have sycophants all over the place, people crawling out of the woodwork to be close to you.  Human beings are defenseless against scent. They can’t hide from it because they can’t see it, or touch it, or hold it. All by itself it crawls into their brains, and by the time they’re in love with it, or the person it’s coming from, it’s too late. They’re tied to it forever, through the long, tight leash of memory.  I suppose what I’m trying to say is that a great scent, like a great love, can crash onto the shore of your life like a wave, creating either damage or change or, in my case, both.  What happened when I came across a scent like that was that I fell in love with two men at the same time, and one was pure evil, and one was good. It was an old- fashioned love triangle. A classic tale that came up roses, and jasmine, and, of course, tears. So, my name is Eva, from the longer and more beautiful Evangeline. And for me, the scent I found held my past, present, and future in its ethereal little hand.***I don’t mean to be morbid and mostly I’m not, but it is possible to love someone evil. I know that for a fact. I wish I didn’t, but wishing isn’t going to change my story. It happened during my eighteenth year, when I was too young to know that there are events and relationships that never go away. That you can never take back. That change you in ways over whichyou have no control. My grandmother Louise, the person I was closest to, would say that none of that mattered anyway. That who we love isn’t a question of good or evil, but one of scent. “Scent can do crazy things to the mind,” she said. “It can make us love people we shouldn’t and turn away those we should. It can make us desire the child of a criminal and shun the overtures of a saint. Never open your legs for a man whose mind you love but only for the man whose scent you can’t live without. That’s the one you’ll stay with forever.” I’d spent every summer of my childhood with Louise, but it was the summer of my eighteenth year that changed everything. That was the beginning of all the danger and the beauty and theblood. 2 Louise lived in the town of Cyril, which sat on a mountaintop in the westernmost part of New York State. It was a small town with only one road used for both directions, so it was said that the way in was also the way out. The houses of Cyril were made of great gray stone slabs and  ]enormous fi replaces, which never seemed to make them warm. They stood in a circle, huddled together on the flat top of a low mountain overlooking an evergreen forest. Look up and the sun was shining. Look down and it was a midnight of trees. The physical description of the town would not be important to my story except for the fact that Louise was an aromata, a master in the creation of scent. A sorceress of nothing, as she liked to call herself, for scent has no physical form. She chose to live in Cyril because she liked when the wind whipped through the evergreens. When the cool smell of the pine needles blew through the windows of her house, which she called the Stone Crow, and erased any trace of her art from the noses of neighbors too interested. “Neve forget, Evangeline,” she said, “those who make perfume consider themselves magicians of the highest order. They believe the scents they make possess the power to turn hate into love. Neutrality into desire. They don’t share their choice of ingredients with anyone. They lock the doors to their laboratories with precision locks made by master craftsmen and later they kill those very same men so that no one will ever know the combination. Not a living soul.” “I’ll remember that, Louise,” I said. I called her by her first name at her insistence. She thought “Grandmother” was too formal and put too many years between us, making it impossible for us to be friends. “Put irises next to your mother’s bed,” she told me, “and she’ll bring you a baby brother. Add a drop of lavender to the wash water and you’ll dream of the man you’ll love. Eucalyptus makes you taller, almondine fatter, and jasmine— oh, jasmine will wrap your entire life in a mystery.” “Do you believe that?” I asked. “Not all of it. But it’s true what they say about jasmine. If it comes from southern India, look out. Wear it often enough and I swear you won’t recognize your own life. You’ll be so confused about who you are you won’t be able to pick your face out of a crowd in your own dream.”

About the Author

Margot Berwin is the author of the best-selling novel Hothouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire. Her work has been translated into nineteen languages. She earned her MFA from the New School in 2005 and lives in New York City.

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