Nightshade

A gorgeous, Gothic, Romany coming of age story that explores the lives of migrant workers in Southern Ontario's tobacco belt-with a dash of magic realism. Zelda is a young, isolated woman who rejects her Romany identity and her family's poverty. Longing for glamour and riches and freedom, Zelda is lured away from working in the tobacco fields alongside her mother and aunts and other migrant workers when she meets Trixie Tormentine, who hires Zelda as an assistant and good-luck charm. What starts out as a summer of ease and access to the unfettered wealth of the Tormentines-Trixie's husband Jack owns the tobacco farm that employes Zelda's family and friends-unspools into dangerous displays of power and manipulation. One of the Romany family's puppets, grandmother Puri Dai, acts as Zelda's confidante and mentor, and warns her about the devil of the tobacco fields, a harbinger of destruction. As Zelda struggles with her simmering feelings toward the Tormentines, the devil appears to her one night in a motel parking lot. Can Puri Dai's love pull Zelda back from the brink and into a new future? The fate of her family depends on it.