photo by Chris Sharratt

These beauties are harebells after a rain. They’re also called Scottish bluebells or fairy thimbles.  And they’re edible. I’m not familiar with them, but grow a larger variety of  Campanula, the bellflower.  Their peak season is about over in my garden, but I’m going to try coaxing out more blooms.

However, since the harebells are tiny and delicate, I’ll be searching  for this variety. Flowers that look like fairies might be hiding nearby are irresistible.

It’s hot here in the Pacific Northwest after a wet, cool weekend. Part of the weekend I spent reading Sin Eater by Megan Campisi. It’s clear she did extensive research although apparently had a difficult time finding many sources. The story begins when May, an orphaned fourteen-year-old is imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread and is sentenced to be a pariah.

It’s a profoundly unusal and dark, genre-defying tale and alternate Tudor English history. Sin eaters actually existed until about a century ago, and had a gruesome task–to assume the sins of the dying by eating a ritual meal of the foods associated with their wrongful deeds. They also wore a locked brass collar bearing an S, had their tongues tatooed with an S, and were only allowed to speak during deathbed meetings while hearing confessions, called the Recitation. These meals or Eatings brought great comfort to the dying since they were assured a place in heaven, while sin eaters joined the daughters of Eve in a miserable afterlife. Almost all were female.

And it’s an utterly cruel world, especially for women.

Salt for pride. Mustard seed for lies. Barley for curses. There are grapes laid out red and bursting across the pinewood coffin–one grape with a ruby seed poking through the skin like a sliver poking through flesh. There’s crow’s meat stirred with plums and a homemade loaf  small and shaped like a bobbin. There are other foods, but not many. My mother had few sins. 

Shunned, their lives were lonely and hard. But into this story limps ‘a reeking leper, a peevish cripple, a gabby-goose actor’ who end up living with May in a wretched neighborhood. But the story is also a mystery since people associated with the queen are dying at quite a pace as the religious turmoil of the era also plays a large role.

Naturally I started jotting down words  and phrases found in the story as when ‘the sin eater gruffs for a space.’ And, ‘Bring us a light, would you? It’s darker than Eve’s heart in here.’  May’s voice is fresh and intimate and you never forget you’re trailing her in long-ago times: Another old body sits with Old Doctor Howe. A man with a stoop and a merry look in bulgy eyes. When Old Doctor Howe starts to weep with his rememberings, the bulgy-eyed eyed man takes his hand and holds it to his cheek like a mother or goodwife.

Some of my favorite scenes  take place amid a festival that includes a play . The revels happen during a foreign emissary’s visit and Campisi has a theater background and it shows.  Readers are over peering over May’s shoulder as she watched the elaborate preparations starting with erecting grand tents and bringing in massive quantities of foods for the feasting.

I’m recommending this book because the premise is amazing and the author took enormous risks in writing it and succeeded. And talk about immersive. Oh, and I forgot to mention, May loves to talk.

Keep writing, keep dreaming, have heart