[[[ contains spoilers!!! ]]]
Hello again, everyone.
I read the Mercy Thompson series religiously, and the lore of her shifter background fascinated me. Somehow or another (who can explain how inspiration strikes?) this story grew in my head.
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Meet three cousins (second-cousins actually), Brie (bree), Tamra, and Lida (lee-duh). Every summer they visit Grandmother (Brie's grandmother, Tamra and Lida's great-aunt) in Bear Paw, North Dakota. But this summer, things are different. All of the girls have a lot on their mind.
Brie is struggling to connect with her mother after the divorce she can't wrap her mind around. She misses her father, and the relationship between her and a childhood friend has become complicated by unreciprocated feelings. Will she and Grant have the same problem themselves?
Tamra feels like her mother will never understand or approve. Her bar-owning parents squabble over her clothing (it isn't THAT slutty!), and if she fails History this year, it's goodbye to track team and the sports scholarship she's striving to recieve.
Lida is tired of being the 'nice girl' in school and the 'baby' of the family. Her best friend is a complicated and confusing creature, and she thinks he just might have asked her out before she left for Bear Paw. Between mixed signals, her own feelings, and an identity crisis bigger than the Titanic, Lida feels like she's being pulled in too many directions.
The teen years are hard, but these girls will have a completely different problem on top of everything else. Their heritage runs thick with Salish ancestry, among other things. A family legend-slash-bedtime story, mixed with some unexplainable events, creates a whirlwind of a summer where they discover that they all descend from an ancient line of shapeshifters.
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I got the idea right around the time we were starting a fiction assignment in my writing class. So, I decided to use this idea. I have done the most character development and plot contemplation I've EVER done before on this story, so I should have a nice solid base to not get writer's block.
I hope you love the story! Read, comment, and vote away. If you vote, please comment!!!
Loves and ink spots,
Rowan T. McAdams (DesiDestroya)
