Lynn Hutchinson Lees moving story about a Roma family working in the tobacco fields of southwestern Ontario during the 80s is a tour de force Matriarch Rhodie and her sisters and daughter fight to preserve their culture while struggling with poverty subpar housing cheating supervisors accidents and more The familys struggles are interwoven with descriptions of natureplants birds and stars crafted in a haunting poetic prose Simultaneously prose poem and pageturnerNightshadedraws us into the lives of its characters Readers will come to love fragile LizaMay who tends to ill and injured birds feisty Lilly who stands up to injustice and protagonist Zelda Eighteen Zelda longs for her own life and like so many young women before her makes both missteps and giant steps discovering what her own path might be And the puppets Grandmother puppet Puri Dais voice infuses the novel with a gentle wisdom as she attempts to protect both her wooden and human chargesUrsula Pflug author ofMountain

Lynn Hutchinson Lees novelNightshadegives a very rare and precious insight into a Romany family and community their language and history and I for one am so grateful it has been written Reading the novel the authors words come from a wise and very old nomadic traditionFor many of us in the disconnected twentyfirst century it is time to speak about our hidden Romany identity and heritage Today it is about being a participant in a global story ReadingNightshadeI felt like I was coming homeFrances Roberts Reilly author ofParramisha A Romani Poetry Collection