Fearcatcher
Subtitle
A Novel
In a small village in Soviet Armenia, a baby girl is found abandoned in the woods, with one hand forced out of her swaddle. All her life Ruzan Garsevanian will wonder what she was reaching for the night the fearcatcher’s husband found her and took her home to his mysterious wife. The fearcatcher is a woman at once at the center of her community and at the very outskirts of it. To men, she is a threat to their traditional Armenian way of living; to women, she is the answer to all of their fears. For the daughter she has adopted, she is the woman Ruzan can never truly know.
Trained by Ripsimeh in the ways of fearcatching, as she grows, Ruzan yearns for freedom: from the hypocrisy and insularity of her village, and from the hand of destiny her mother swears will eventually take Ruzan in its grasp―for when a fearcatcher dies, a fearcatcher is born. In the capital city of Yerevan, where revolution brews, Ruzan is determined to carve out a life on her own terms. But when disaster threatens the lives of both the family she has left behind and the family she has newly begun, Ruzan must decide whether she will become unknowable to her own daughter, too.
Lush and mythic yet profoundly intimate, Naira Kuzmich’s posthumous debut novel is a journey through perpetual questions of fear and of fate.
Bio
Naira Kuzmich graduated from ASU with a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing in 2013. She passed away in 2017.
Praise for this book
"Naira Kuzmich is the rare writer whose technical mastery and ineffable magic soar together on the page to create works that are unforgettable. In this superb novel, Kuzmich deftly weaves an epic story of what holds together family and identity, the boundless ways we both run from and toward the ones we love. 'Fearcatcher' is a new cornerstone of Armenian-American literature.
Aram Mrjoian Author of "Waterline"
"In Ruzan Garsevanian, Naira Kuzmich has created one of the most iron-willed protagonists I've ever read... 'Fearcatcher' is proof that Naira Kuzmich was a fearless storyteller, a writer capable of making—in far too brief a time—a lasting work of art.
Chris McCormick Author of "The Gimmicks"
