We the We the wanted

What happens when human lives are not considered valuable because they are of a poorer population or class. What happens when these unwanted decide to travel to America or other places booking passage on a coffin ship? Patrick finds himself on this ship with people grounded like sardines in areas so small they could hardly survive . The stench was unbearable and the deaths numerous as the diseases ran rampant within the inner spaces of where these poor people were housed. Food was not fit to eat and at the end of his journey he lost the two people who started out with him. The prologue gives us the hint to what will come and who will join him on the next leg of his journey if he survives .

We meet Patrick, a famine emigrant and on a coffin ship from County Cork, Ireland, to the Gross Ile Quarantine Station, Canada. Finding himself lost at times due to fatigue and hunger and more. At the same time And Paris D’Arcangelo, a Vodou priestess, deals with slavery, having to run for her life and a Civil War that will possibly happen in New Orleans. Riding the Underground Railroad north along the Mississippi River to a lighthouse that has been abandoned forsaken in the remote Adirondack wilderness at the edge of a vase and forest that is cursed and the harrowing bluff of Lake Champlain, our story beings when she and Patrick connect. What happens when human lives are not considered valuable because they are of a poorer population or class. What happens when these unwanted decide to travel to America or other places booking passage on a coffin ship? Patrick finds himself on this ship with people grounded like sardines in areas so small they could hardly survive . The stench was unbearable and the deaths numerous as the diseases ran rampant within the inner spaces of where these poor people were housed. Food was not fit to eat and at the end of his journey he lost the two people who started out with him. The prologue gives us the hint to what will come and who will join him on the next leg of his journey if he survives .

The characters in this novel are unique and have hidden abilities that when confronting others whether spirits or human they take on different shapes, manifest odd personalities and what they eat, drink and can do will shock you to the core. Patrick and Angele have many discussions and she tire to explain Papa Legba who is the Lord of the Road and an intermediary between Iowa and the living. It is hard to tell at times who is human and who is not. Papa Lega is the conduit between Guinee-the Spirit World and our own. Vodou struck a chord that made him uneasy and discontent. If they appease him he will allow them to speak with the IWA. Then something happens and the lights are out and then she examples more about Papa’s veve which is a beacon to let Papa know they want him to appear. Special words signal him and along with these two Emily, Mary and Cumberland are there and have a role in what happens next. Papa comes and he sees the spirit of Aoife watching the ceremony from the stairwell and extended his hand to her. Speaking to her he wants her to come and dance with them explaining that she is the lady of the house.

Angele relates her life story as we get to understand what happened to her being sold to a person and used as a slave. Sharing her life from the moment she was born and what happened to her mom, Madam chained her grandmother to the kitchen, brutally beat her no one could stop what happened to them. Madam had imprisoned her alongside side of the grandmother in the kitchen. The horrors that she endured, the screams that caused the attention of the neighbors and then her sister Lia and what was done to her was more than brutal  punishment and then result she plunged to her death rather than endure more. There is much more that she reveals and Patrick listens as she explains that she spent  a decade working as part of a labor gang at the Habitation Haydel sugar plantation. There was a man named Turk or Mehmed claiming he was the Grand Vizer to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and he bought her. The remainder of the chapter titled The French Quarter describes in a graphic and visual manner for the reader what happened to her, the carnage, the violence and the horrors she and her family faced at the hands of so many people. Her mother helps her to escape and then they are directed to a police station and the Detectives followed the trail of gore through the house and what happens to Turk is he alive or buried alive. Did he suffocate before they departed? In the next chapter titled Denial the story continues, and she explains that they have all walked through fire as a group and the result you will not believe. Dealing with the slave patrol and the atrocities that they went through as a result Patrick could find no words to object to what she was imparting and yet how many rational people would believe her? Added Patrick often asked himself about the priest that we meet at the start of the story and who offered him a malicious grin upon being caught in the act of raping Kate. Absalom and Thomas were standing guard and hoping they were safe. Explaining who Junior was and his role and what happened to Mr. Williams will make you grinch.

The chapters that follow go into the explanation of what Patrick thinks he encountered, the pukawudgie and the other creatures as well as the cruelty of those that were supposed to place them in custody of someone to care for them. But they did not. The remainder of that chapter vividly describes the cave that they were hiding in , the fading light needed to refill their eater rations and hunt for food. What was found was not exactly great to eat and the taste awful, but it beat starving. Tragedies happened and the history behind Cumberland’s parents remained untold and then Patrick feared that he was about to learn what happened when the two groups were separated was it the pukwudgie? She describes what happened when she works up and then explaining  the foundation of salt water and the Plymouth Trading Company a small parcel of vegetable came and then she goes on an explains Wendigo and Algonquian folklore. Look at the picture before Chapter 9 that sets the stage for the horrors to come and the screams that they hear and the end of the lighthouse how and why? The original document from Caleb and then the spirit speaks and the year that the pukwudgie have taken so many and now she stats they are gone. What happens next will shock you as they try and leave the lighthouse but who does not survive? The end is coming close, and the next chapters describes what happens to all of those that are left and why Angele leaves her sisters alone in the lighthouse and yet she does not know if they survive. Going ahead she realizes the only option might be to turn back and the paths are dangerous and filled with ice, slick and more and the result is you will not believe the ending.

The illustrations tell the story in their own way as you see the figures minus a face and unable to really tell what and who they are, but you can feel them and their evil, demonic and hoping to take down the next one who comes in their paths. Glut give finality to some of the characters, and one loses the battle, and you wonder just where the body winds up.  How do you deal with a wendigo and what is their outcome when Angele reaches the gorge walk and what she has to do is beyond anyone’s capabilities, but she needs to try and survive? The last two chapters are heartbreaking when you learn the fate of Mary and Emily who were entrusted to someone to bring them to safety but where they wind up is tragic, heartbreaking and makes you wonder just how the people running these mental institutions lived with how they treated people. Thinking they are both insane which they are not they wind up even worse than if the spirits got them. The final scene determines what happens to Angele and she too will learn the meaning of betrayal from someone she thought she could trust. The ending is tragic and lets the reader wonder if these spirits and characters are more to tell us and more stories to impart as authors Matthew and Schultz have created a story that keeps you spellbound, fearful, wondering and inquisitive about what is real, what is imaginary and what is the truth behind what happens.

We the Wanted: Does that mean those spirits that they are trying to hunt and destroy? Does it mean those that have been wandering like our cast of characters who are wanted by the spirts that are evil and filled with hate and the devil? Does it mean those that are trying to survive in a world that is not a true reality. What ‘s next for them?
Fran Lewis: Just reviews