Fireflies in Winter, Eleanor Shearer (Review by Abigail Blake)

Rating: 3.5/5 Stars 

Set against the backdrop dramatic Nova Scotia scenery, Fireflies in Winter is an intensely beautiful story of love and freedom in the late eighteenth century.

The novel mainly focuses on Cora, a Jamaican Maroon recently transported with her people to Nova Scotia by the British. The Maroons are, and have been for decades, recognized as free. However, in this new, much chillier land they rub shoulders with black people trapped in indentured servitude alongside others still categorically enslaved. Many are recent migrants from America following the revolution, brought to the still-British north either against their will (still enslaved) or by choice for more secure opportunities of freedom.

At the center of this story, Cora encounters another form of freedom: that of the escaped slave. Agnes, a former slave who ran away with her father, lives and survives in the untamed wilderness. She and Cora are drawn to one another like fireflies to a flame. Their touching love story, filled with discovery and wonder, shows glimpses of true joy in a place with the odds of accepted forms of love, harsh winters, and the laws of the land stacked against them.

Cora’s story also explores the intricacies of other kinds of love: an adoptive mother for her child (and the consequences of secrets kept). Secrets withheld and eventually revealed create wounds that stress the bonds of love, but never fully break. Additionally, the novel explores love and grief through Cora’s friendship with Thursday, an indentured servant who sees in Cora his sister reborn.

All the tensions and love between these four characters come to a head in a trial that threatens the literal freedom of Agnes, and the freedom in love she and Cora have forged together.

With more description of action, scenery, and internal emotion than dialogue, the pacing moves a little slow. But the depth of feeling throughout is enormous and poignant. Much of the connections made between characters come from memory and the exchanging of experiences; being known and understood by those the characters love.