Set against the background of post-World War 1 rural Tennessee, A Spell for Change takes readers through the complicated, racist, and misogynistic world of a Southern town where people are made to play small and struggle to survive, even as magic flows through the veins of certain citizens. Nora Jo is a single white woman, teaching school in rural Chatuga, Tennessee. Distrusted for being unmarried and educated, she soon finds herself out of a job and is told pretty plainly that it would be better if she married or left town. Kate Mayer is a black young woman working odd jobs in a desperate attempt to keep her family in place, rather than having to move everyone to Nashville. Her visions of the future are terrifying and rarely come on at opportune times. Oliver is a former solider in World War 1, injured and struggling to find any purpose. His experiences have left him with the ability to see ghosts. While Nora Jo finds herself learning about her internal powers as a witch, Kate and Oliver work to try and unravel what their visions and ghost sightings mean. Both seem to have warnings like crazy, but unable to piece together what they mean. When demons become a real threat, the three have to fight to survive.
I’ll be honest; the racism in this book is scarier than the demons. In a world where so much of this nonsense is front and center in America again, the beginning of A Spell for Change feels a bit like reading the news. Writer Nicole Jarvis creates characters that the reader desperately wants to scoop up and place in a fairer world with better options. At times, the book can be exhausting with the wanting for something good to happen to these poor people. Nora Jo’s story seems to be held at arm’s length from Oliver and Kate’s, really only fully intertwining at the very end of the book. I found myself feeling like I was reading two different books that somehow got a crossover at the end. A Spell for Change is marketed as a fantasy, but the book feels like anything but. This is not a piece of fiction to read to escape into a faraway land, but rather one to force readers to confront the inequities we and our neighbors face every day.
A Spell for Change is available May 6, 2025.
