The Sacred Beasts

by Jafek, Bev

• ISBN13: 9781943837465
• ISBN10: 1943837465
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2016-10-01
• Publisher: Bedazzled Ink Publishing

Summary

Ruth, a brilliant zoologist and geologist, has just retired with her lover, Katia, to her family home in the southern tip of Argentinean Patagonia. Ruth conceives a unique way of dealing with her grief over Katia’s sudden suicide with the creation of an outdoor art garden made of cast-off objects and garbage. Sylvie, a young French artist, is drawn to the art garden and she and Ruth discover that they are kindred spirits. They travel to Spain’s Costa Brava and then on to Barcelona—Ruth filtering the world through her feminist political and zoological/environmental perspective, and Sylvie capturing the world around her with a vivid, penetrating artist eye. Together they discover a new vision of liberated women: sacred beasts.

Author Biography

Bev Jafek has published about forty short stories and novel excerpts in the literary quarterly and university press publications. Some have been translated into German, Italian and Dutch and won many literary awards, including publication in the annual “prize” anthology, The Best American Short Stories. She also won the Carlos Fuentes Award and the Editor’s Prize for fiction from Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry & Prose as well as first prize in the Arch & Bruce Brown Foundation annual competition for “redemption of gay history” through creative writing. Her first story collection, The Man Who Took a Bite Out of His Wife, was published by Overlook Press (Penguin-Putnam).