Nevers

By Sara Cassidy

Resourceful fourteen-year-old Odette is on the move again, traveling as a stowaway on a cheese cart with her hapless mother, Anneline. They are in Burgundy, France, in 1799, fleeing yet another calamity caused by Anneline (who is prone to killing people accidentally). At dawn they find themselves in a town called Nevers, which is filled with eccentric characters, including a man who obsessively smells hands, another who dreams of becoming a chicken and a donkey that keeps the town awake at night, braying about his narrow life. As Odette establishes a home in an abandoned guardhouse, she makes a friend in the relaxed Nicois and finds work as a midwife's assistant. She and Nicois uncover a mystery that may lead to riches and, more important for Odette, a sense of belonging.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
• Release date: Sep 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781459821651

Sara Cassidy

SARA CASSIDY is a journalist, editor and the author of twenty children’s books. Her books have won the Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize and been Junior Library Guild selections. They have been nominated for the Governor General's Literary Award in Young People's Literature, Chocolate Lily Award, Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Award, Diamond Willow Award, Silver Birch Express Award and the Sunburst Award. Sara lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

Book preview

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Here follow the adventures of resourceful, fourteen-year-old Odette and her beautiful but mortally clumsy mother, Anneline, on their arrival by cheese cart to the small city of Nevers, in a part of France where the fields are green and rolling, the houses are built stone upon stone, castles rise over the landscape and rabbits raid gardens on moonlit nights.

Radishes are especially sweet and soporific when the moon is full. Clover is too. I know these things because I know things that most mortals do not. I know the smell of clover when the moon glints like a silver coin tossed aloft by Fortune deciding whom to favor.

I tell this story because Odette is too modest to speak of herself. She is having a well-deserved rest now, and when she opens her eyes again, she will be too busy to dwell on the past. After the marvels that have exhausted her, Odette is poised to enter her own life.

Why is it that we want to know what others think and feel? To dip our buckets into their silence? Why do others’ stories seem more colorful than our own? Perhaps each of us knows our own story too well. It is erased, as it were, as soon as we turn the page.

I understand what it is to yield to silence. To have words clot in your throat and to choke when you mean to speak. These days, though, words flow through me as easily as water released down riverbeds in spring. The snow has melted, and the ice has thawed. I will do my best to share all that I have seen and heard.

For a long time the people of Nevers laughed at me. They threw rocks at me, dead fish, the spokes from a broken carriage wheel once. But late at night, when they were lonely and afraid, some of them confided in me.

I will miss a few details—that is inevitable. But I’ll embellish here and there to balance things out. Not to worry. The main facts of the story are sturdy. Its bones, its timbers. Time to step into its chapters. Time to set sail for a corner of France in the very last year of the eighteenth century.

One

"Whoa!"

The carriage halts suddenly, startling Odette from a dream in which she was a large wheel of soft cheese about to be rolled off a cliff. She has spent several hours as a stowaway in the back of a dairy delivery carriage, with a block of Comté cheese for a pillow and a ragged length of damp cheesecloth for a blanket. Is it any wonder she is dreaming about Camembert?

Odette listens as the milkman steps down the carriage’s creaky steps to the muddy road. Footsteps approach, sucking at the muck. "Bonjour," says the milkman. A man with a gravelly voice responds. The two discuss the unseasonal downpour that occurred just before dawn and fall into conversation about the best remedy for an aching bunion. One swears by boiled chamomile flowers mashed with leopard-slug slime. The other recommends manure from black pigs, collected in a thunderstorm.

The two strike a deal for a dozen wheels of Brie for an impending wedding feast. They then agree that it isn’t too early for a glass of wine.

Odette elbows her mother, who snores wetly beside her. We’ve arrived somewhere.

Anneline raises her head and scowls at the murky surroundings. She closes her eyes again. Odette raises the carriage’s canvas cover a thumb and watches as the milkman hitches his horse to a post and bumbles into the tavern with his friend. Odette tugs her mother’s loose braid. Now.

Ouch. With much grumbling, Anneline unfolds herself from the crush of cream jugs and butter logs while Odette gathers up their few belongings. Anneline points to a basket brimming with small goat cheeses. Grab some trouser buttons. And a round of Morbier. That’s the one striped with black ash.

I won’t thieve.

Odette leaps down to the mucky road and puts out her hand to help her mother.

Daylight powders the darkness. A woman in rags struggles past, pushing a wheelbarrow heaped with cauliflowers. A man lugs reed cages; inside them heavy rabbits move warily, the X’s of their noses twitching for a familiar smell.

Market day, Odette observes. I wonder what town this is.

Anneline turns to a man draped in sausages. Excuse me…

Odette grabs her mother’s grimy sleeve. Mother, you can’t just ask a stranger, ‘Where am I?’

Why not?

It’s the one thing you’re supposed to know—where you are.

"I suppose. But I know a lot of things people aren’t supposed to know, such as what a man’s finger looks like lying on a paisley carpet. That toothy dog was far too protective of me. And the cruelty of nuns. And the sweet ache in a woman’s lungs as she exhales her last wretched breath of air—"

It was not your last breath of air, Mother.

It could have been.

Except, of course, you’d flirted with a fireman earlier that day.

Is it my fault he fell in love? Or that he chose to dive into the cold water to save me?

Drowning himself.

Yes. Poor man.

And now you’ve gotten another person killed. I saw legs sticking out from the rubble. Mr. Pannet, I’m quite sure, judging by the expensive shoe leather.

Anneline giggles. The tax collector. Finally some luck. But then, to Odette’s surprise, her mother’s face crimps with concern. Was there anyone else?

Crushed? I don’t know. I don’t think so.

Anneline peels off a white glove and waves it in the air. I surrender.

Odette grits her teeth. She has little patience this morning for Anneline’s potion of charm and helplessness. Surrender from your life, Mother? she asks. Not possible. Not with that dirty glove anyway.

The rising sun has cast the sky in pink, bringing light to the faces of the farmers and artisans preparing their market stalls. The shadow thrust by the massive cathedral at the edge of the marketplace begins to retreat. Odette takes in the buildings around her and glimpses in the distance a wide river busy with boats. She and her mother have arrived in a sizable town.

As they walk through the wakening marketplace, Odette remembers to keep a close eye on Anneline, who has a dismaying habit of taking fruit from the bottom of fruit sellers’ carefully stacked pyramids. But Anneline isn’t eyeing the fruit. Instead, she is staring up at the cathedral walls.

"Now those are flying buttresses! Anneline points to the row of high stone arches that keep the cathedral walls from collapsing sideways. I could have used a couple of them last night."

"Why did you push over that wall?"

I only leaned against it. I was tired. Light-headed from the wine.

Anneline giggles, but to Odette the giggle sounds forced. Hollow. Does her mother actually feel shame? That would be new. And she hasn’t sent apples rolling into the street, nor is she chatting with everyone they pass, flashing her white teeth. Perhaps Anneline is changing. Perhaps, Odette dares to hope, in this unfamiliar city there will be no misadventure, no chaos—

Thief!

A bony woman in a dirty pinafore pulls forcefully on Anneline’s cloak.

Let my piglet go! the woman screeches.

Anneline, rattled, lifts her skirt. A glistening pink snout protrudes from underneath. Get out of there, you silly beast! Anneline warbles. But the piglet only disappears again beneath her petticoats.

The rich are cockroaches, the bony woman squawks to the gathering crowd. The Revolution did not stamp them all out.

Anneline lifts her skirt again. Odette notices that her knees are scratched from scrabbling in the castle rubble the evening before. The small pink creature snuffles at her feet.

Oooh. Her ankles must smell like truffles, titters a large man with ink-stained fingers and an impressive nose.

Odette reaches for her mother’s hand. You need to get away from it. Jump!

Anneline tries to hop over the piglet, but she trips and lands on the small beast, making it squeal like a set of wounded bagpipes. As the creature squirms beneath her, Anneline flails and falls backward. Her head strikes a cobblestone with a CRACK that echoes off the cathedral wall.

Ohhh, the crowd murmurs.

The skinny woman in the dirty pinafore snatches up her piglet and wags a finger in Anneline’s face. Serves you right!

But Anneline does not respond. She is unconscious.

A man who has been applying paint the color of the local red wine to a nearby window shutter hurries down his ladder and strokes Anneline’s head with his paint-spattered hand. Her ladyship, so radiant, so ravishing, so shapely, he coos.

Hey! Odette yells. My mother is not shapely.

Anneline stirs. Actually, Odette, I am. All of my husbands have said so.

Divine angel, the painter sings. Do you know where you are?

Anneline raises her head and looks about, dazed. No, she says. I haven’t ever been here before.

I will tell you. You are in the town of Nevers.

Two

It is difficult to shake the painter. Odette finally points to the paint hardening on his paintbrush and says, You’d better get those shutters finished.

The painter looks wounded. It is true, he admits. I must return to my labors. He reaches for Anneline’s hand. If you ever need something painted—a room, a wall, a bedstead—ask for Guillaume. I am at your service. He climbs back up his ladder, shouting "Adieu!" from the top rung as Odette and her mother head into a maze of narrow streets.

"What would I want with a piglet? Anneline complains. It was a cute little thing, though, wasn’t it? Those freckles like soot spots. Oh, my head. What did that odd-looking painter call this town?"

Nevers, Odette answers.

It’s an English word, isn’t it? For nowhere? Or nothing?

It means ‘not ever.’

That sounds promising. Like oblivion or something.

Oblivion is promising?

"From the Latin oblivio, meaning ‘obliteration,’ says Anneline. Anneline’s fourth husband had been a polyglot, a morose one, who taught the children of the wealthy and undertook to teach Odette and her mother Latin and Greek. Odette had done well, but Anneline had not—she had bristled at having to sit like a schoolgirl. Complete forgetfulness. Wouldn’t that be restful?"

No! Odette cries.

But maybe it would be. Odette could forget all of the calamities her mother had wrought, and her parade of awful husbands. Maybe she could forget the questions posed by her own pale, lopsided face whenever she caught sight of her reflection, questions about the ugly husband, as her mother referred to the first husband, who had engendered her. He was a librarian who, though not dashing, was rumored to have had a half ounce of royal blood in his veins. Odette had never met him. Anneline had not learned she was pregnant until the day after he died.

If we forgot everything, I believe I would be young again, Anneline muses. "I am beautiful now, but you should have seen me at your age, Odette. Once, in the town of Cluny, spying me from high in the tower, the abbey bell ringer was unable to ring the Angelus bell, he was so

Reviews for Nevers

[skstiles612 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was a fun and funny book. I would say this is perfect for upper elementary and lower middle school. However, as an adult I found this a pleasure to read.Odette is a young girl who must take care of her mother Annalise. Annalise seems to have a habit of accidently killing people. They have come into the small French town of Nevers. All Odette wants is to find a place they cans stay and call home and to fit in, maybe have a friend. Odette finds a friend in a young boy named Nicois. The town is full of strange people. There is man who likes to smell people’s hands, and a man who wants to be a chicken. There is a pig and chick that have become inseparable, and then there is the donkey that brays in Latin every night. The strange thing is that Odette understands him. Odette’s mother has brought about some trouble for them because she has been looking for a box she hid under a bridge years before. Someone else is looking for it as well.The book is a mixture of some fantasy, mystery and a bit of historical fiction all rolled into one great book. Kids will love this because they will be able to identify with the characters. This is a book I would highly recommend to readers of all ages.

[bkjake · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A delightful new fairy tale! Great characters and fun plot. The magic was subtle, but integral to the story. The history shared in the appendix was a nice surprise.

[dragondrudge · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Nice story, full of interesting characters with interesting "gifts". Moves slow to begin with but contains good character development. I like the setting and the author's explanations at the end and how she was inspired to write. I also agree with the age level recommendation. Thanks for writing this, it was a fun read.

[stephlamb-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

There are books you just dive into head first. Whether it's the subject matter, the writing or the feeling of familiarity with the story, something about that book grabs hold and lingers long after you are finished reading. Sara Cassidy’s new book Nevers did just that for me. Upon reading the description of the story I was intrigued and after reading the prologue I was completely enraptured.Nevers is the story of young Odette and her mother Anneline set in France in 1799. A family who uproot frequently owing to Anneline’s fondness for drama. When they arrive in Nevers, Odette finally begins to feel comfortable, making friends and finally feeling part of a community, an eccentric community but one nonetheless. The story takes the reader on a journey filled with enchantment as Odette learns the meaning of home and the power or community.Sara Cassidy’s lyrical writing is completely captivating. The language and flow of the story gives it a dreamy quality, you cannot help arrive in Nevers yourself in your own sabot (wooden shoes) waiting for M. Mains to come around the corner and ask to smell your hands. This story is incredibly quirky adding to its incredible charm. Even though it is set back at the turn of the 19th century, it contains some modern ideas and creates space within its pages for readers to be seen. When Odette assists the midwife at a birth, the child is proclaimed to be neither girl or boy. There is a duke in the story who only has eyes for other dukes. I’m not a historian by any stretch of the imagination but I’m pretty certain even during the revolution, most communities would not have been welcoming or open minded about differences. They are moments told with kindness, as a matter of fact and add to the richness of the story Sara Cassidy tells. It’s a beautiful lower middle grade novel (officially for children 9-12) but is a book that will be enjoyed by many readers above this age classification. The story is so layered and subtle, it is one you can enjoy at middle age and then pick up again as you get older. There is a beautiful moment in the story when Odette and Nicois are talking and Nicois is sharing a piece of himself and he states: “It feels good to put the pictures out of my head. Spread them on the grass, like newly washed clothes.” It is a moment of utter tenderness and the beginnings of a lifelong friendship. Isn’t that what friendship is all about, the ability to talk openly and share our stories with each other, the good and the bad, so we can spread the pictures out on the ground. There are many more instances of tenderness and love throughout the story but I will leave them to you to discover. It’s not a surprise Nevers found its way onto CBC Books list of must read fall middle grade and YA fiction. Certainly worth looking for it when it releases September 3rd.

[keristars_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When I finished reading Nevers and tried to describe it, I wasn't sure where to start. "It's a strange little duck of a tale" is about as far as I got. And it is! With time and trying to explain the story, I have grown very fond of it and its little quirks, and can describe it better as a series of non sequiturs strung together and embellished into a plot, much like a fairy tale turned into a dream.Nothing quite makes logical sense in the book, but it also makes complete sense in the story. Magic is actually misunderstood science, except when it is magic, and men can turn into Latin-speaking donkeys and women can be accidental death-magnets for the men in their lives and piglets and chicks can be best friends.The story is a little absurd but cozy and delightful. Despite everything, it manages to paint a neat little picture of everyday village life after the French revolution, rather than the big Parisian kind in history books. There are recurring themes of birth, death, and what makes someone a parent or child or family that took me too long to pick up on, but which I liked the frank discussion of. One of Odette's deceased stepfathers was a grave digger and death is a known thing in 1799, but also life and birth. She assists a midwife at one point, and is present when an old woman passes. Families are described matter of factly when the child is born to different parents, and some parents are better than others, but they all try their best.I was pleasantly surprised by the casual inclusion of queer identities. One of the men in the story has a husband, which is simply as it is and no source of conflict (well, there is a problem that he's married at all, but the identity of the spouse isn't the issue). There's also a few lines from the midwife about how the new baby appears to be a girl, but you don't always know - sometimes the child announces they are a different gender when they're old enough to say so (the midwife herself is an example). The not-quite-magical nature of the story makes this last thing feel like a fantasy element instead of just something that happens, but honestly I think any mention at all in a middle grade book is pretty great.In the end, I suppose the story doesn't really go very far. There is a plot trajectory in there, but it seems secondary to the dreamlike daily life for Odette in Nevers and her path to growing up.The more I talk about this book, even if I struggle to articulate my thoughts, the more I like it!

[jreynolds1959 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Odette is on the run again with her accident-causing mother, Anneline. Anneline has a tendency to bring on death to people she gets involved with (7 husbands to be exact). They come to a town called Nevers and start to settle in. The town is filled with eccentric characters: a man who obsessively smells hands, a piglet who takes over mothering a chick, a donkey who brays loudly at night speaking in Latin, etc. While Odette seems to feel a sense of wanting to feel secure, Anneline is seeking a box that was left under a bridge at one time. She leaves notes in every town they have been through. Odette becomes friends with Nicois. They discover the secrets about the donkey and other mysteries.This was a good story. Lots of French language, which is good if you speak French, though I do not. The language is pretty though. The story rambles a little bit, but is fun to read.

[susanehh · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I received Sara Cassidy's “Nevers” as an advance reading copy through Library Thing.This book is a light fantasy set in France soon after the Reign of Terror. It is centered on fourteen year old Odette and her mother, Anneline. The two are constantly on the run because Anneline has the unfortunate habit of marrying often, then accidentally killing her husband. They are also on a quest for a mysterious treasure that may save them from poverty.As this book opens, Odette and Anneline arrive in the village Nevers, a strange little place full of all sorts of quirky characters including a donkey who brays in Latin.This book has a lot of positives. It's well written with a clever plot. The overarching theme is one of acceptance and tolerance, which is wonderful except at times I felt I was being hit over the head with it. A bit more subtlety would be nice.

[mizpurplest · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Delightful. I read this in one sitting, and loved every minute of it. The story is fresh, playful and modern simultaneously with taking place in the late 1700s, so don't expect historical authenticity, but to me the twists were wonderful and welcome. Light, as expected from an middle reader, but compelling and sweet.

[jenjobo · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was immediately engaging, but it falters a time or two with truly unnecessary details and ultimately had a very abrupt ending. You are following the story of young Odette who has been forced to move from place to place throughout her young life due to the deaths or mishaps that occur around her beautiful mother. They move, by chance, to a town called Nevers where magical things seem to happen. The problems that I had with the story center around the jumpiness of the story line. There were some beautiful moments when Odette is remembering her favorite stepfather but then there are strange moments. When she assists the midwife in the birth of a child, it is discovered that the child is a hermaphrodite. The midwife decided to call her a girl, but her power is that she can decide someday what she wants to be. This detail doesn't come in to play at any other point in the story so I have to wonder why it was included at all. All in all, the author has a gift of drawing you into the story. I wanted to know more about Odette and her new life, especially her developing friendship with Nicois. It ended all too quickly and I found that to be disappointing.This book was provided free for an honest review.

[eggsnhm · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This most delightful new fairy tale feels like it's been handed down for generations upon generations and is should absolutely become a classic. Set in France just after the Revolution, the story focuses on Odette, a girl about 14 who's primary responsibility seems to have been taking care of her flighty mother, who has a habbit of becoming widowed by accidentally killing her husbands. Odette & her mother come to the town of Nevers, and it becomes Odette's fate to uncover a long-kept and mysterious secret, all while navigating curious characters, such as a man who is obsessed with smelling the hands of everyone he encounters, another who wants to become a chicken, and a donkey that brays in Latin after the sun goes down.

[oceancat-3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a fun book about a resourceful girl and her accident prone mother who end up in a town full of quirky characters. A quick fun read that blends historical fiction with some fantasy elements. In between the donkey that mysteriously speaks Latin and the man who wants to be a chicken, it gives a little glimpse of life in 1799 France. There is also an authors note at the end which tells more about what was going on in France at the time, and what the town of Nevers was like, which I really enjoyed. I definitely would have skipped that part as a kid, but I’m glad it was included!

[jackiewark · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

During the time of the French Revolution, Odette, 14, scurries from town to town after Anneline, her beautiful, but ditsy mother accidentally causes the death of numerous husbands. Now, they've ended up in Nevers....a strange little town with quirky characters, both human and animal. With a new friend, Nicois, Odette uncovers a secret which will have some consequences for these odd townspeople. In Nevers, there is a male donkey, Anne, who brays loudly only at night and who speaks Latin, but only to Odette. There is an odd man, M. Mains, who likes to smell hands. And, of course, blacksmith Clement, who will play a very important part in Odette and Anneline's lives. When Odette and Nicois discover the clues to unlock Never's secret, they stop at nothing to make it right. Nevers, with its cast of eccentric characters, zippy dialogue, and outlandish happenings makes for a ingenious read. Thank you to LibraryThing Early Reviewers, Orca Books, Kennedy Cullen, and Sara Cassidy for this ARC.

[ashleytylerjohn · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I received this book as part of the Early Reviewers program at Library Thing.This didn't cohere for me. There was very little plot (I am reminded that "The King died, then the Queen died" is not a plot, but "The King die, then the Queen died of grief" is, and wished the author had been so reminded). Odette and her mother move to town, and they meet people, and things happen, but it doesn't start resembling an actual novel with a story to tell until about page 170 of 220 pages.The back cover purports it to be "magical realism" but it's actually an uneasy mixture of absolute insistent realism (someone reads a book where the words disappear, but then it's explained immediately that it isn't magic, it's science, it's a special ink that vanishes when exposed to sunlight) and absolute 100% fantasy (transformations). Almost every character is an exaggeration of some type, but the tone of the story doesn't suit this approach. I know I'm not the target market, but (unlike most of the reviewers below) I think this would bore the bejeezus out of most children.On top of that, it was uncomfortably modern (I never believed any of the characters were post-revolutionary French from more than 200 years ago), with hermaphrodites encouraged to choose their own gender, gay Dukes unafraid to declare their sexuality, etc. There's no reason the central premise of the (tiny) plot couldn't be enacted now, if the author is so keen to appear "woke." (Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s). I feel a lot of readers automatically render any book they enjoy 5, I'm a bit more ruthless.

[ladycato · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I received an advance copy via NetGalley.This middle grade book brings to life the town of Nevers in the years soon after the French Revolution and follows the adventure of Odette, a serious girl who must act the adult as she looks after her flighty mother. Odette stumbles from a hidden place in a cheese cart and into Nevers with its closed pottery factory and a strange dancing donkey who bellows in a Latin after dark. The girl yearns for a stable home for herself and her mother, and in Nevers, she finds that and so much more.There are elements of magical realism and some grittiness, too. It doesn’t shy away from the hardships of that time period. However, this balanced by a strong sense of hope and acceptance. There are characters who are intersex and gay, all part of a setting that feels cozy and realistic in its diversity. I was left feeling like I wanted to settle down in Nevers and live with these people. As a child reading this, I would have felt that even more strongly. My only criticism is that the plot felt too convenient, especially a subplot about a book where Odette could have had more agency. That said, the book is still a joy, a read to be enjoyed by children and adults.