Rebekah's Refuge

Title: Rebekah's Refuge

Series: None (published as part of the Golden Braids collection)

Year: 2019

Author: Meredith Leigh Burton

Summary: Never allow a stranger to buy you anything. Never reveal what you truly are. Above all, never, ever allow your hair to be cut.

In a plague-ravaged world, people will stop at nothing to find a cure. Rebekah is a young norn who on the run for her life. Charles, a man desperate to heal his ailing wife, wants the life-giving magic contained in Rebekah's hair.

When Rebekah’s path crosses with Martha’s, a mother who has lost her daughter to the same man, secrets will be revealed. Buried fears will be resurrected, and the conflict between norns and humans may cause devastating havoc. Will Rebekah and Martha find a way to help both human and nornkind, or will Rebekah’s pursuer capture her? Will the plague be eradicated, or is a more sinister plan at work?

Things are not how they appear in this story of finding a place to belong. Rebekah’s Refuge is a tale of sacrifice, love and courage. You will meet many individuals, human and norn alike, who bear scars, scars that cannot be seen. A tenuous thread binds their destinies together, but threads, like hair, can easily be cut. Only those who listen can find the courage to fight. Rebekah’s Refuge is a tale of desperation and hope, a story of turmoil and healing. 

Review: It's difficult to pin any one genre/subgenre on it because it draws from multiple. For one, it's a clever Rapunzel retelling with unexpected twists on all the usual elements. But it's also slightly dystopian given that it's a tale of a world ravished by illness, and some people are desperate enough to try anything to get the cure. Additionally, it's also fantasy, since we have a culture of humans living beside (although not always peacefully) another race of beings called norns.

Rebekah is a young norn, a special race of beings that have special powers through nature. One of the defining characteristics of norns is their hair. Although it may look like regular human hair, it contains power and, once cut, fades into a lettuce-type of consistency and can be eaten as medicine for the dreadful Bind Weed plague. However, since the hair has power, a norn can physically feel it being cut off, and once cut it grows back weaker.

I can guarantee you've never read a Rapunzel retelling like this before. The author incorporated so many of the elements from the original fairytale, but all in super unexpected ways. For once, hair is key. And for that, I'm excited about. Too many times, I think Rapunzel stories give Rapunzel long hair, but don't ever give her a reason to HAVE long hair. This Rapunzel has both the long hair and a compelling reason for it.

You know what else this story does? It follows the tale of what happened to the wife after eating the (forbidden) vegetable from the witch's garden. This tale is so Rapunzel, but so not because everything is turned on its head.

My complaint for this tale would be the shifting POV. I realize that the story is complicated and requires many people to tell it, but scenes would cut from one character's narration to another without warning, and sometimes it was difficult to tell who you were supposed to be following. In the beginning, especially, I had to read a few scenes twice to understand what was going on. Also, while the end was super sweet, I felt that the climatic scenes were just a little bogged down by so much having to be wrapped up in such a short amount of time. I think stretching it out a little to breathe could have made it slightly easier to follow.

But overall, this is one Rapunzel tale that doesn't follow the normal retelling rules. And thus, it should be one you need to add to your fairytale retellings shelf.

Advisory: Some violence/pain/illness. Since the norns have special powers (particularly medicinally), some of them are forced into helping try to find a cure for the plague. Several norns have their hair cut off, and the story hints at possible rape to help conceive babies.

One passionate kiss between a man and his wife.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars