Venco

Publisher's Description (Random House Canada): 
Lucky St. James, orphaned daughter of a bad-ass Métis good-times girl, is barely hanging on to her nowhere life when she finds out that she and her grandmother, Stella, are about to be evicted from their apartment. One night, dejectedly doing laundry in the building's dank basement, Lucky feels an irresistible something calling her. Crawling through a hidden hole in the wall, she finds a tarnished silver spoon depicting a storybook hag over letters that spell out S-A-L-E-M—a spoon whose otherwordly energy soon connects her to a teeming network of witches who have been anxiously waiting for her.
    
Chief among them is Salem-born Meena Good, finder of a matching spoon. Under the wing of the international headhunting firm VenCo, devoted to placing exceptional women in influential jobs, Meena has been collecting these spoons, and the witches who found them, in order to former a magic circle that will restore women to their rightful power.
    
But now, with only one more spoon to find, a roguish and deadly witch-hunter has Meena's coven in his sights. As the clock ticks toward a now-or-never deadline, Meena sends Lucky and her grandmother on a dangerous, sometimes hilarious, road trip in search of the seventh spoon. It ends in the darkly magical city of New Orleans and a final confrontation that will either usher in a new beginning or force witches  to remain underground forever.

Author's Biography (Random House Canada): 
Cherie Dimaline is an author from the Georgian Bay Métis Community. Her book The Marrow Thieves won the prestigious Kirkus Prize for Young Readers' Literature, the Burt Award for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Literature, and the Governor General's Literary Award, among others. It was named a Book of the Year on numerous lists, including those from NPR, the School Library Journal, the New York Public Library, the Globe and Mail, Quill & Quire, and the CBC. Its sequel, Hunting by Stars, was published in 2021 to great acclaim, and has been selected as Book of the Year from NPR, Indigo, and Kobo, and is a Good Morning America Buzz Pick, as well as a Cityline Book Club Pick for December 2021. Her most recent novel for young readers Funeral Songs for Dying Girls was a A BookPage Most Anticipated YA Book of 2023.

Resource type: Book (Fiction/Poetry)

Age recommendation: Grades 4-6, 7-9

Keywords: Métis, orphan, Toronto, witches, magic, women, circle, mother, maiden, crone, travel, urban, city, magical realism, feminism, writer, system

Year of publication: 2023

Publisher information: Random House Canada