2020/066: Winter Tide -- Ruthanna Emrys

Someone lied about us, about what we did in our temples and on beaches such as this. The government believed them: when I was twelve they sent soldiers, and carried us away to the desert, and held us imprisoned there. [p. 26]

Ruthanna Emrys' Winter Tide is a subversion of Lovecraft's The Shadow over Innsmouth: here, the monsters are white men, and the narrative focusses on characters -- Aphra and Caleb Marsh, Ron Spector, Professor Trumbull, Dorothy Dawson, Neko Koto, Charlie Day -- who are variously 'other', Jewish or queer or female or Japanese or Black.

Aphra and Caleb are the last two survivors of Innsmouth, having endured eighteen years in an internment camp, where they were befriended and helped by the Koto family when Japanese-Americans were interned during WWII. Aphra is working in a bookstore and, together with her boss Charlie, trying to piece together the ancient rituals and traditions that are her heritage, when she is approached by FBI agent Ron Spector, who wants her help in investigating a Russian spy ring which might be trying to use ancient body-swapping techniques to infiltrate the highest offices of government. In exchange, Aphra and her brother will gain access to the library at Miskatonic, where books stolen from Innsmouth -- their heritage and history -- have been locked away. During the course of their investigation they encounter a Yith (time-travelling body-swapping archivist) in human form, a young African-American woman whose FBI assignment is deeply repugnant, and a number of irritating white men.

I admired this novel a great deal: the prose is lovely and the examination and reframing of Lovecraftian 'horrors' from within is thoroughly convincing. I didn't really warm to Aphra, for some reason: perhaps her hard-earned detachment, perhaps my own emotional state. But I am interested enough in the plot and setting to want to read the second in the series, Deep Roots. And the themes -- found family, reclaiming one's heritage, pushing back against expectation -- are ones that resonate, for me.