Two “flowers that bloom in low light,” Octavia and Roen are drawn to each other’s inward natures and passion for the mysteries in the natural world around them. An agro-scientist, Octavia is on the precipice of discovering Alaskan wildflowers’ medicinal abilities, while Roen’s research on an advanced hearing aid requires him to test animals, including a certain “thriving, inquisitive, and keen” arctic fox. Roen subdues the ethical conundrum of his work by assuring himself that “it’s for science, though, right?” while Fox, “unwell in the metal crate... is desperate to flee.”
As Octavia and Roen sew their lives together, they tear the fox’s life apart, and in the space between the three, Cantafio (author of My Stay with the Sisters) brews a complex tension amid the moral quandary of the couple’s careless treatment of natural life and the fox’s feral revenge. It reads like a dark fairytale, “a fantasy marred by // testing nature,” and its lessons resonate in today’s climate crisis created and perpetuated by the same motives Roen has when he captures Fox: progress, no matter the means or the cost. At the mournful dirge’s conclusion, readers are left questioning what humanity’s responsibility is to the world they inhabit.
Takeaway: Cautionary romance depicting the consequences of mistreating nature.
Comparable Titles: Robert W. Service’s “The Spell of the Yukon,” Mark Perlberg’s “The Dead Fox.”
Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A
