What do readers think of Fireflies in Winter by Eleanor Shearer? Write your own review.

When the novel begins in 1796 we meet Cora, a free Black who has relocated with others from Jamaica to Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia's small Black population includes free, indentured and enslaved living among whites.

Cora is unusual since she's been free her entire life and her personality refuses subservience. As she wanders the strange and cold land around her, she slowly discovers a woman and her dog living in the woods. The story continues as the two find the wonders of the landscape and each other. Their story is very well written and enjoyable.

The novel places the love story within the context of free Blacks from Jamaica living in Nova Scotia. We aren't given many details about the actual reasons behind the Maroons' dislocation nor many day-to-day details of their lives. These details would be welcome, perhaps with the Jamaican history expanded. That story alone would lend the historical veracity behind the move to cold Nova Scotia from tropical Jamaica.

Reading this feels like following Cora on a slow meander through the woods of self-discovery as she repeatedly learns to embrace the truth that there are "no perfect choices." The writing is smooth and the style is gentle. It was soothing to read this in the midst of my fast-paced life.

Wanted more.

The story about two women in Nova Scotia in the late 1800s opened up an area of history. I knew nothing about. I was intrigued by the story of their struggles, both emotional and physical, and how they both persevered in their own ways to make their way.

However, I wanted to know more. The narrative seemed lacking in giving us a background about how and why the people had left Jamaica to come to Nova Scotia and how Agnes's background easily different from Cora's. Online research after I finished the book filled in gaps that would've made the book more enjoyable. Also I wanted to know more about how Agnes, in particular, survived in the wilderness. What other implements did she have? How did they move from place to place so apparently easily? Perhaps the author didn't want to bog down the story with these details, but it would've helped me understand the characters better.

Finally, a couple quibbles about the writing style. I'm not a fan of writing in present tense. There weren't that many scenes from the past that were written in the past tense to make the present tense elsewhere a necessity. And the author's use of incomplete sentences forced me to slow down to fill in what were missing words to me.

Overall, an enjoyable character study about a time and place unknown to me.

Haunting and beautiful. Fireflies in Winter acknowledges the flaws within us all, while at the same time reminding us that we are never beyond redemption.

It took me a while to get into this book, but once it got going, I couldn't put it down. I love how the author puts the main focus on the relationships between the characters and how they change and grow. They are all so flawed and therefore real and relatable. Excellent read.

This is a slow moving saga set in the 1700s, about the love between two women that are running from their past. Agnes, once a slave, escaped her master after a tragedy with her parents. She now lives off the land with her dog in the woods. She fled from Virginia to Nova Scotia, where she meets Cora, a native of Jamaica, who sees Agnes in the woods one day and strikes up a friendship. There's quite a bit of history here that I was unaware of, when the British forcibly relocated the Maroons from Jamaica to Nova Scotia to help in the war effort.

The book goes back and forth between Agnes and Cora's determination to survive the brutal Canadian winter, to a trial where one of them is accused of a crime. The description of the brutal winter is just bone chilling. When one of them falls through the ice and is left for dead, you can't imagine not being in shelter. They both have chances to abandon their wilderness survival class, but don't think they can be together unless they are away from society, which makes for a lonely existence when you just have each other.

It's very well written, with excellent character development and gives you a glimpse into this period of history so that was interesting, but just sad that a relationship between two women could not be accepted back then, or they thought it couldn't, that they had to isolate themselves. But they were happy, so to each his own.

A very sweet, tender queer love story set in a little known period of Black history - when the British government forcibly relocated Maroons from Jamaica in the late 18th C to Nova Scotia. It’s a very subtle story on what freedom means - very prescient for our times.

Cora, a Maroon, a free black Jamaican community that escaped slavery and integrated with the indigenous Taino, is part of the forced exodus. Her foster family wants her to marry but Cora wants her freedom. She escapes from time to time to the woods, where she meets Agnes, formerly enslaved but taught by the Mi’Kamq how to survive in the forest. With Agnes, Cora feels free - not only in the joys of learning about nature, but discovering love and its joys. The story is told in alternating POVs and an added mystery at the end rounds out the story that highlights the high price of freedom.

As I wrote above, this is a sweet story - Cora and Agnes are such innocents. I think this sweetness and innocence which bumps up against crassness and greed flows beautifully from the author’s pen. Their need for connection is both poignant and sad - that is, how society decides who can be free or who is acceptable as a human being is do wrong but isn’t something new. This has been going on for centuries and given our current state of affairs, acceptance is still so conditional. This is why books that tell these kinds of stories are important.

I had just recently finished George O’Malley’s The Escapes of David George. David George, a runaway slave reached the Nova Scotia black community, so this book had double resonance for me. I learned a bit about the Nova Scotia community so this helped me in reading - not that you have to read this book (though it’s very good). I had also read the author’s previous book, River Sing Me Home, which also dealt with her Jamaican roots. I know very little about Jamaican history, so historical fiction which brings to light events of the past is so important. Thank you Ms Shearer! Your current book is well done and a fine read.

I’d like to thank NetGalley and Berkeley Publishing for allowing me to read this fine ARC.
#FirefliesInWinter
#EleanorShearer
#BerkeleyPublishingGroup

Set in the late eighteenth century, Fireflies in Winter tells an important historical story that I was unfamiliar with. The novel explores the experiences of the Jamaican Maroon population—formerly enslaved individuals who escaped American slavery—who were forcibly relocated by the British to Halifax, Canada. This transition, from the warmth of Jamaica to the harsh cold of Canada, and with limited resources, is central to the narrative.

The history depicted in the novel is fascinating, however, the narrative can be challenging to follow, as it weaves together the histories and stories of slaves, indentured servants, and Maroons. And characters I kept confusing.

The story is told mainly through Cora, a young Jamaican Maroon woman, whose journey highlights encounters with a diverse, mixed-race community of immigrants. These individuals are united by their struggle to survive the brutal Canadian winter near Halifax and collective abuses as people of color, enslaved people, and as always the story of women who are limited in any power or independence. This was an important story that was somehow not written in a way to engage my continued interest, slow and confusing.

While Eleanor Shearer's prose is descriptive, Fireflies in Winter often gets bogged down. I found myself wading through a significant amount of "filler"—details and subplots that didn't feel essential to the core arc. When a story is rich in historical potential, you want every sentence to build toward the climax, but here, the pacing often felt stalled by information that didn't move the needle.

One of my biggest hurdles was the lack of context regarding the Maroons of Jamaica. The Maroons have a fascinating, complex history of resistance and independence, but the narrative seems to operate on the assumption that the reader is already well-versed in their story.

Interestingly, Shearer mentions in her acknowledgments that she wasn't initially familiar with this history herself. It's a bit of a missed opportunity; rather than bringing the reader along on that journey of discovery, the book leaves a gap where foundational world-building should have been.

The book finds its stride in the latter half. From about the 60 mark to the 85 mark, the story gains the momentum I was looking for. During this stretch, the stakes felt higher, the character motivations were clearer, and the "fluff" fell away to reveal the heart of the story. If the rest of the book had maintained this level of energy and focus, it would have been a much stronger read.