One hot summer night, best friends Lourdes, Fernanda, Ana, Perla, and Pauline hold a séance. We were five Chicanas living in San Antonio, Texas, one year out of high school.” Kari begins to quickly investigate whether her mother’s disappearance was indeed of her own volition, or due to something more terrifying.“Five of us sat in a circle doing our best to emulate the girls in The Craft, hoping to unleash some power to take us all away from our home to the place of our dreams. My history.” Kari has spent her thirty-plus years of life running from different parts of her history, but particularly any thoughts of the mom who abandoned her-as well as the traditional knowledges of her tribal heritages.Īs the Kirkus review states, up to this point, Kari has “mostly ignored the spiritual aspects of her Apache and Chickasaw ancestors, preferring a good party instead.” The bracelet, which is clearly Indigenous and patinaed with age, begins to make these parts of Kari’s identity more immediate for her-particularly once it triggers a vision for Kari of her mother’s ghost trying to survive a bloody attack. “It hummed with power,” Kari tells us, “with history. Debby holds it out to Kari while they sit at the bar, and a strange feeling passes over her. It is Debby who tells Kari she was clearing out some boxes in her dad’s attic and found a bracelet that belonged to Kari’s mother. Kari’s cousin Debby is her foil-femme, married with kids to a controlling low-key jerk-and her best friend. Her dad, bereft, drove for stretches with a bottle to numb the pain-until he had a wreck so bad it left him bedridden and Kari to care for him. Her mother up and left when she was two days old.
The heartbreak for Kari starts essentially right after she’s born. She’s tough and smart, and you like her right away. Kari’s sharp tongue, simmering sense of uncertainty about herself, along with a few shots of heartbreak, make her undeniably compelling. Wurth’s debut novel White Horse follows our protagonist Kari, who lives in the Denver area and frequents a dive bar of the book’s same name.
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