The Fergus Extras

Author Appearance on local 5 live

Tori Grant Welhouse was on a guest on local CBS affiliate WFRV-TV during the “Local 5 Live” show with Lisa Malak.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW

The author of The Fergus answers readers’ questions.

Review

A review of The Fergus
by Thomas Davis
In the Unsettled Homeland of Dreams

Winner of the 2019 Edna Ferber Fiction Award by Council for Wisconsin Writers
As in Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Tori Grant Welhouse’s novel, The Fergus, tells the tale of a journey. Unlike the noble knight from La Mancha, however, Rork, the Fergus, a young Scottish hero, does not fight dragons that are really windmills as he travels with his loyal servant, Sancho Panza, but instead is enticed into searching in the afterlife for his recently deceased grandmother by a flippant banshee Boo, “messenger of the living and the dead.”

The heart of the novel rises from Fergus’s grief for his “gran,” the only one in his life who gave him the support he needed as he was growing toward manhood. His father, an ex-military man, does not know how to relate to his son, his mother died a long time ago, and, by the time the novel opens, his best friend has turned into a bitter enemy. Out of grief comes a wild journey when he accidentally stumbles on a magical meadow in deep woods where he finds Boo dressed in her glitter.

Fergus’s adventures in the afterlife, “the other world,” have a whiff of ancient Scottish legends. As he searches for his gran with Deirdre, a companion summoned out of thin air by Boo, a girl who talks to plants and wears “a strange assortment of layers,” including “leggings, a skirt of some kind with corners like a handkerchief, a top he imagined a ballerina would wear, a rainbow knit scarf,” a landscape of strange rivers, caves, mountains, ghosts, and an assortment of Scottish ghosts and creatures greet them.

If the Mester Stoor Worm of Scottish folklore, with its breath so putrid it contaminated plants and destroyed animals and humans, is not exactly found in the novel, there is a forest of Memory Trees, a creek of quenching, a labyrinth of walls that grow into “a daunting edifice of ramparts ten feet tall,” deadly hag beetles, and a terrible “pall,” a “vast, accumulating cloud of would-be extermination.” The only thing the afterlife does not seem to contain is what Boo promised: Rork’s beloved gran.

Making the action even wilder are Rork’s former best friend, Hamish, Char Boy, a boy who had been burned to death, and another banshee, Beck, who despises Boo. As Rork and Deirdre face one challenge after another, with Boo popping into their journey sporadically and without warning, Beck leads his companions in violent efforts to destroy Rork’s quest as he keeps trying to find his gran.

The Fergus can be, by turns, funny, offbeat, apocryphal, and serious while containing some of the irreverence and comic genius of the British writer, Terry Pratchett in his disc world series. Sometimes the reader also feels like they have plunged into a video game world where every level of action becomes more complex and difficult to traverse. But mostly this is a unique work of fantasy fiction that can twist your mind around and leave you celebrating that you had the good sense to start reading the first page.

Playlist

Rork, “the Fergus,” is an intriguing personality mix of outcast, patriot, techno geek, sensualist and loving grandson, and the songs on his playlist reflect these wide-ranging influences.

Songs

• Taro, Alt-J

• Bloodflood, Alt-J

• I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles), The Proclaimers

• Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps, Cake

• Praise You, Fat Boy Slim

• Gooey, Glass Animals