Award-winning Mexican-American and Indigenous author Jennifer Givhan brings us an exquisitely written, spell-binding psychological thriller—weaving together folk magick with personal and cultural empowerment—that is perfect for fans of Mexican Gothic.

When Eva’s husband is arrested for the murder of a friend, she must confront her murky past and embrace her magick to find out what really happened that night on the river.

Eva Santos Moon is a burgeoning Chicana artist who practices the ancient, spiritual ways of brujería and curanderisma, but she’s at one of her lowest points—suffering from disorienting blackouts, creative stagnation, and a feeling of disconnect from her magickal roots. When her husband, a beloved university professor and the glue that holds their family together, is taken into custody for the shocking murder of their friend, Eva doesn’t know whom to trust—least of all, herself. She soon falls under suspicion as a potential suspect, and her past rises to the surface, dredging up the truth about an eerily similar death from her childhood.

Struggling with fragmented memories and self-doubt, an increasingly terrified Eva fears that she might have been involved in both murders. But why doesn’t she remember? Only the dead women know for sure, and they’re coming for her with a haunting vengeance. As she fights to keep her family out of danger, Eva realizes she must use her magick as a bruja to protect herself and her loved ones, while confronting her own dark history.

River Woman, River Demon is a mysterious incantation of reckoning with the past and claiming one’s unique power and voice.

Excerpt

Chapter 1

October 18

It isn’t the first time I hear a woman howling from the water.

The river that flows alongside my property keeps me close to Karma, even as it reminds me of my apple-cheeked friend who drowned when we were fifteen-year-olds in the girldom-womanlost space where Karma got caught, where she ghosts the borderlands between almost-woman and never. In my Mexica culture, a woman forever yowls beside a ditch bank. Or a girl. Depending on which story you believe. She’s supposed to be a mother, but in some versions, she never grows beyond round-breasted girlhood. She bears the body for mothering but drowns before she’s given the chance.

The water laps over the sides of the tub, jarring me back. I flip the faucet off with my toes and recline deeper, staring out the window at the waxing moon. A sliver of candlelight against the glass sends a shadowing across my center. Where it aches. I hold my breath and lower my head into the bathwater, eyes wide, suds filming across my eyeballs as I attempt, again, to view the world the way she saw it, in the end. Each time I plunge myself beneath the surface, Karma appears. Girl I loved most in the world. Girl they say I drowned.

Nothing comes we haven’t conjured or called, one way or another.

I blink the spume away, staring at the bloated moon above, its face as round as last I saw Karma’s. The alcohol sopping my memory doesn’t help. Vodka tonight. It sloshes at the edges so I can’t remember when I went from my hot shop—where I must have spent hours, the furnace running, unable to create anything worthwhile, just imperfect glass for the junk pile—to the tub. Nor can I recall why I chose the bathwater over the warmth of my bed and Jericho’s body, or why the water beckons, perpetually calls me under.

When I shut my eyes again, the moon disappears. How long did Karma hold her breath—I wonder every time as I hold my own—before she too vanished from this world.

Buy on Amazon | Audible | Bookshop.org

About the Author

Jennifer Givhan, a National Endowment for the Arts and PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices fellow, is a Chicana and Indigenous novelist, poet, and transformational coach. She is the author of Jubilee, which received an honorable mention for the 2021 Rudolfo Anaya Best Latino-Focused Fiction Book Award, and Trinity Sight, winner of the 2020 Southwest Book Award. She has also published five full-length poetry collections and her honors include the Frost Place Latinx Scholarship and the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize.