A woodworker and a runaway inherit a house with legs. It seems too informal a way to describe Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott, and yet that is exactly how it starts. When I first picked up this novel a few years ago, I read roughly fifty pages and loved it. Loved it so much that rather than continue reading, I put it back on my bookshelf because I didn’t want it to end. Recently, I had the book club at my job read this, and I got the courage to read it all the way through. And as someone who loves adventure and how fantasy novels explore grief, this delightful story did not fall short.

Bellatine Yaga, a college graduate apprenticing as a cabinetmaker, gets a call from a lawyer about a will, and learns that she has inherited something from a family member no one truly remembers. But in order to receive it, she has to reunite with the other family that was mentioned in the will, her estranged brother, Isaac.

Isaac Yaga, or more recently called the Chameleon King, a runaway turned street performer and petty thief, has never truly settled in one place for long. He receives his notice from the lawyer after a partially failed performance where he pickpocketed half of the attendees, and promptly steals the truck belonging to his roommate in order to make the meeting spot.

An awkward reunion takes place between the two, but it is quickly shadowed by the presence of their inheritance, a small house. A small house with two chicken legs, that has a mind of its own. Thistlefoot, as it is lovingly called, has its own narration within the novel and chooses to use it to describe the various ways it came to be a house. And about the person who inhabited it long ago, Baba Yaga: the supernatural witch from Slavic folklore.

The presence of such a house in this tale is almost insignificant. Barely into the first few chapters, the narration goes on to say that in rare circumstances, there were certain houses that grew sentience to guarantee survival in a stressful event. A break-in, an avalanche, or a wildfire, these houses adapted as necessary. And yet the Yaga siblings don’t know too much about the Baba Yaga, their supposed ancestor. The lore around the Baba Yaga in real life is so spread out through history that it is rough to find an exact start and end to it. In Becoming Baba Yaga, the author Kris Spisak goes through pieces of her story within folklore, and yet, there is always more to Yaga.

The Yaga siblings see the house in different ways. Isaac sees it as an opportunity, while Bellatine sees a true home in it. So they make a deal: run a tour of the old theater, act they did as kids with their parents, when the tour is over, and they go their separate ways again. Isaac gets to keep the money they make, and Bellatine keeps the house. Yet on this tour of old memories, fixer-uppers, and reconnection, they are also being followed by someone who wants the memories of the house and what it stands for wiped out.

A few of the content/trigger warnings in this novel include: Generational trauma, self-harm, genocide, necromancy, grief, infanticide, horror, and eugenics.
Please take care when reading this novel. While it does not treat these topics lightly or with disrespect, it doesn’t make it any easier to read about.

♦♦Spoilers ahead♦♦
Isaac and Bellatine are very gifted individuals in their artistry. The traveling theater is never at risk of boring audiences, not when there is so much of their play being brought to life. Both metaphorically and physically, as Isaac can shapeshift into any person he desires, it’s how he’s been able to make it so long on the road, and get away with stealing despite not being the best at it. But Bellatine is hesitant to play the show as the puppeteer, having not-so-fond memories of the puppets coming to life. Which only gets worse when it seems that Bellatine is the one causing them to be animated. Isaac has his own difficulties with the theater itself, but pushes through, as this would be the longest time he has ever stayed in one spot. Even though the house is moving them from location to location, he grows restless, which leads him towards some sketchy places.

And throughout this journey, the Longshadow Man follows. The physical embodiment of fear, hate, and every awful shadow that attaches onto this traveling force that tries to erase everything about Thistlefoot, but cannot erase what has already been shared about the Baba Yaga. As GennaRose Nethercott writes in the foreword of Becoming Baba Yaga, she mentions how retellings of folklore are a different thing than a simple adaptation.

“I see a folktale as a living thing. It adapts as if alive. It learns from its surroundings and evolves to fit into each new storyteller’s mouth. A folktale will alter its markings like a chameleon, blending into each culture and time period that adopts it. It has a desperate desire, it seems, to stay alive.” (Spisak, p. x.)

And just as the folktale adapts to stay alive, so does Isaac when the Longshadow Man comes into their home to take it away. Isaac takes the shape of every person who was killed during the massacre in the past, the same massacre that Baba Yaga escaped from, breathing life into the house through the act of her child’s passing. The grief that Yaga went through had traveled through her family line to the twins in two specific ways. Isaac is always on the run, unable to stay still without feeling a sense of doom. And for Bellatine, her hands were filled with the desire to never touch death again, and so she breathed life into things.

I adored how the narrative shared every key point with the reader. Through the house, through Bellatine’s hands, through Isaac’s steps, and through the shadows the Longshadow Man left behind. I loved the way Thistlefoot changed the origin of Yaga every chance it got, how it would lie for comfort and apologize with truth. And the more supernatural it became, the more rooted in history it felt. There is so much more to this story than what I have shared in this article, and I encourage you to read it; it’s available in audio, ebook, and physical print as well.

References and Works Cited:

Nethercott, GennaRose. Foreword. Becoming Baba Yaga: Trickster, Feminist, and Witch of the Roads. By Kris Spisak. Hampton Roads Publishing, 2024.
Nethercott, GennaRose. Thistlefoot. Random House, 2022.

ISBN: 9780593468838 (this is for the hardcover edition)