Mystery Special Feature: Broken but not Dead by Joylene Nowell Butler

When Brendell Kisêpîsim Meshango resigns from the university and retreats to her isolated cabin to repair her psyche, she is confronted by a masked intruder. His racial comments lead her to believe she is the solitary victim of a hate crime. However, is all as it appears? After two bizarre days inflicting a sadistic captivity, the intruder mysteriously disappears.


Taught to fear and distrust the mainstream-based power structures, and with her stalker possibly linked to a high level of government, Brendell conceals the incident from the police. But will keeping quiet keep her safe?

Then her beloved daughter, Zoë, is threatened — and Brendell takes matters into her own hands. To save Zoë, Brendell searches for the stalker and confronts not just a depraved madman but her own fears and prejudices.

Read an excerpt!
 

I could barely remember the first time. Agnostine had towered over me, her frizzy black hair fanned out in a witch-like style while she shrieked that drunken shaman spiel until I believed the pain and bruises were a fair exchange for my mother’s final fatigue-induced silence. Exhausted from inflicting another beating on one more unwanted child, Agnostine would wobble to the chesterfield where she’d pass out until evening. Or until the desire to beat another child overcame her. Later when her snores filled the tiny house, Jules lifted me off the floor, sat me on the edge of the basin outside the back door and washed away the grime and the dirt and the rye whisky smeared into the welts across my cheek. In soft whispers, he urged me to cry. “Tears are a good thing, baby sister. They seep into your skin and clean away all the wickedness that’s touched you.”

But despite Jules’ urging, I could not cry. Holding the evil inside had felt good.



Read the reviews!

Joylene Butler’s protagonist, Professor Brendell Meshango, is a complex and uniquely Canadian character. She is a strong woman, but neither her Aboriginal childhood, her adult success as an academic, nor her fierce loyalty to her own child prepare her, or us, for the terror that strikes when she becomes the victim of a, seemingly random home invasion. The action in “Broken But Not Dead” is gripping; the characters are rich and the climax riveting.

--Gail Bowen

Joylene Nowell Butler, Métis Canadian, has been writing for 28 years. A retired emergency responder, she was born in Manitoba, moved to Maple Ridge, B.C. as a child, attended Douglas College and Simon Fraser University. She and her husband moved to Pr. George in 1979 where they raised their five sons. In 1992 they built a cottage on Cluculz Lake, near Vanderhoof.

In her spare time, Joylene teaches Tai Chi.

Copies of Joylene's books are available online at:

theytus.com
Books & Company
Amazon.ca

blog: http://cluculzwriter.blogspot.com/

webpage: http://joylene.webs.com/