Reluctant Gods

This is the second book in the Feathers and Light series. To summarize how the first book (Feathers and Light) ended, in Sorche's words...

"I ended up on a mountain in the dark with a god who was trying to kill me. I either blew her to smithereens or blasted her off a cliff. I'm not sure which. After that I was in some kind of trance and when I woke up, Sophia dropped it on me that she and most everyone else in her neighborhood were gods, that my friend, Brighid, is a god, and that my mom and dad and sister are all demigods, or maybe gods. And worst of all, I'm some kind of super-demigod/god."

In Reluctant Gods, Sorche, her sister, Harper, and Brighid-the Celtic goddess of sacred springs and wells-struggle to adjust to the fact that they are not just normal kids. To help them, Sophia-the wisest of the gods-teaches them that they can use the healing and spiritual powers of their feathers and the Light to perfect the art of Patience. And Enya-Queen of the Gentle Folk, the Gentry, the Fairies-tells them this will be a year of growth and they should embrace all the experiences that come their way. But both imply that, in the end, when all else fails, they may just have to "wing it".

The three girls have very different reactions to this rather minimal guidance.

Brighid, having-in the preceding book-more or less accepted her condition, sets out to discover what it really means to be herself. So except for learning to control her quick temper, and perhaps learning to play the whistle (which she is said to have invented), she's the easy one. She knows that her jobs include giving hope to those who are fearful or anxious, and offering creative inspiration to all who seek it. But she is warned that because there are so many more humans now than when they first invented her, the greatest danger she will face is burnout. Indeed, she is but the latest renewal of "Brighid" because all her predecessors burned out. Sophia and Enya tell her that if she tries to go it alone, to provide direct service to all who need it, she'll be done by the time she's thirty. Rather, she needs to depend on, and to help, the Gentle Folk. They are the ones who now do most of the real, day-to-day work. She needs to think of herself as the caregiver to the caregivers.

As the youngest of the three, and at perhaps the peak age for human intellectual curiosity, Sorche is the most open to new and weird experiences. Perhaps because of that, she ends up performing technically impossible weather modifications to save their town from wildfires, healing a friend dying of cancer, dancing at ceilidhs and helping to convince a theoretical physicist that immortal gods don't just disappear when they are forgotten. And at the same time, she does all the things that a normal ten-year-old, fifth grader is supposed to do.

And then there's Harper. She is the most reluctant of the three, saying that regardless of this god-hood diagnosis, she just wants to be a normal human. She declares that if she never meets another so-called god, or never meets a single fairy, or hears another word about either of them, it will be fine with her. But "normal" is continuously challenged, not least by the discovery that many of her best friends are actually Gentry, and that there are some pretty cool gods still wandering around. So after the many challenges that the year throws at her, as she turns fourteen, she resolves to accept as her new normal all that she has been given. She resolves that under those circumstances, she will simply take charge of herself.

While Reluctant Gods is filled with adventure, it is also an exploration of what it means to be growing up. It is a tale emphasizing the importance of family and community. And it is a tale of self-empowerment.