The Night Battles

Historian Joan Severance returns to the Sicily of her childhood, ostensibly to do research in archives newly opened in the remote fortress town of Valparuta. In truth, her academic career lies in ruins behind her she has been relieved of her teaching duties at Brown University after assaulting a student. Unable to approach her own long-buried history of loss and displacement, Joan has become obsessed with the lost possessions of those long dead all the objects, furniture, clothing and tools she finds recorded in Renaissance probates. But Valparuta, Joan discovers, is haunted, too. Unseen hands vandalize its homes and streets; the archivist, Cosimo Chiesa, suffers invisible blows. As Joan's disturbed, hyper-intuitive mind falls increasingly under Valparuta's spell, the embattled Chiesa begins a subtle campaign of seduction and tutelage whose purpose at once shocking and inevitable will force Joan to confront her unacknowledged past. A spellbinding, fiercely original novel of love, intrigue and psychological suspense, The Night Battles maps landscapes real and imagined where dream and belief, memory and longing, desire and obsession converge.

From Publishers Weekly

Bloxam delivers fine Sicilian literary horror in the vein of Tom Piccirilli and Sara Gran. When Joan Severance finds her career as an anthropology professor on the rocks, she returns to Sicily, her childhood home, and finds work as an archivist, performing research in the coastal village of Valparuta. Immediately, she is attracted to fellow archivist Cosimo Chiesa, who reacquaints Joan with Sicily's Mafia. (Years earlier, Joan's mother, a crusading anti-Mafia journalist, became a victim of their vengeance.) Paranormal forces are also at work: Joan learns of the benandanti, a fertility cult whose spirits battle evil witches to ensure a bountiful harvest. This spiritual struggle has continued until now, as Joan and Cosimo, a self-admitted benandanti, are thrust into the terrifying "night battles." Joan and Cosimo also discover a valuable Cadmus bible, clash with the mob and become star-crossed lovers. Bloxam's ornate prose is the perfect complement to her complex heroine and the creepy goings-on in this eerie and satisfying debut novel. (Dec.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Failed academic Joan Severance flees to Sicily to visit the extraordinary archives newly opened in the remote town of Valparuta. It is the country of her mother, a famous crime-scene photographer who was murdered by the Mafia. Joan is totally taken with chief archivist Cosimo Chiesa, a mysterious figure who appears to have a drug problem. Carrying emotional problems of her own, Joan finds a real kinship with Cosimo, who shares her passion for research and for old books, and the two become lovers. She slowly discovers that all of the men in the town, Cosimo chief among them, belong to the benandanti, a cult of spirits charged with protecting the harvest. He enters into “night battles” that leave him bruised, bloody, and exhausted. Then Joan learns that she herself seems to have a similar calling. Bloxam, in a highly original debut novel, slowly and skillfully deploys a violent alternate reality. And she renders the eerie happenings in such careful and elegant prose that the novel’s style becomes as much of an enticement as its substance. --Joanne Wilkinson

About the Author

M.F. BLOXAM has lived in Sicily and on both U.S. coasts, and currently lives on New Hampshire's brief coastline. She is the author of prize-winning short fiction and creative nonfiction. A background in anthropology and museum work informs her writing. This is her first novel.

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