Thistlefoot

The novel opens with a prologue meditating on the Russian thistle, the tumbleweed, brought to America by Russian immigrants in 1873 via contaminated flaxseed. This invasive plant, now an icon of the American West, is secretly a foreigner, and when its ancestral homeland burns, tumbleweeds across America burst into sympathetic flame, establishing the novel's concerns: displacement, inherited memory, and the persistence of the past.

Isaac Yaga is a gaunt street performer in New Orleans who earns the moniker "Chameleon King" for his uncanny ability to mimic strangers by studying their posture, movements, and speech. He supplements his tips with pickpocketing and has chronic migraines and tremors that worsen when he goes too long without performing. Becoming someone else is the only relief from being himself.

His younger sister, Bellatine Yaga, is Isaac's opposite: a woodworker living a quiet, controlled life in rural Vermont. Their estrangement has lasted six years, since Isaac dropped out of high school and vanished without warning.

Both receive a call from an inheritance lawyer: Their twice-great-grandmother's will, hidden for 70 years, has surfaced, bequeathing an heirloom to the youngest living descendants. They meet at a New York shipping terminal and open a massive crate containing a small, ancient timber cottage with whitewashed walls, a sod roof, and painted animal motifs above the door. As they stare, the house squeezes itself free and stands up on two enormous yellow chicken legs.

Inside, Bellatine feels an inexplicable sense of homecoming. Isaac proposes a deal: He will sell her his half if she converts the house into a traveling theater and tours with him for one year, performing their parents' puppet show, The Drowning Fool, with all earnings going to him. Bellatine agrees but insists on handling technical operations rather than puppeteering. She names the house Thistlefoot and begins restoring it.

Bellatine's aversion to the puppets conceals a deeper secret: the Embering, a supernatural heat in her hands that can animate inanimate objects, giving them independent motion. Her mother treated this ability as shameful; her father revered it. Bellatine has spent years suppressing the power, and inside Thistlefoot, it is naturally dampened, making the house her sanctuary.

The novel introduces the Longshadow Man, a well-dressed figure with a Russian accent who poisons people using a blue bottle. His liquid fills victims with irrational terror and violent suggestibility, a state called being "smokefed." His reflection reveals not one man but thousands of writhing, ashen figures. At a Vermont bar, Isaac encounters the Longshadow Man while in disguise and is warned not to drink from the bottle by Shona, who along with her companions Sparrow and Rummy forms the Duskbreaker Band. They have spent months tracking the Longshadow Man and rescuing his smokefed victims, and they instruct Isaac to flee with Thistlefoot.

The siblings begin their tour in Brattleboro, Vermont. During a rainstorm show, Bellatine retrieves a misplaced puppet, and the Embering surges, sending it crawling across the floor on its own. The tour continues south as Isaac hides the Longshadow Man's pursuit from Bellatine. Their host in Brattleboro, Li Fen, a beloved family friend, is killed when the Longshadow Man burns down the venue.

In a Baltimore cemetery, Bellatine discovers a vial Isaac stole from the Duskbreakers and, mistaking it for moonshine, drinks the Longshadow Man's poison. Smokefed, she nearly saws off her own hand before the Embering erupts. She grabs a carved-stone memorial statue, and her power awakens it: Winifred Hadley, who died of typhoid fever in 1884. Unlike previous Emberings, Winifred does not revert to stone. She remains animate, silvery-skinned, with an insatiable curiosity about the world she observed for a century but never experienced.

The group converges on New Orleans, where the siblings discover Yiddish letters and a photograph from 1919 showing their twice-great-grandmother, her daughters Illa and baby Malka, and Thistlefoot. Bellatine and Winifred grow closer, though Bellatine fears Winnie's affection may resemble the obedience of a golem, a creature of Jewish folklore animated to serve its creator, rather than genuine feeling.

The Longshadow Man poisons dozens of New Orleans residents, who attack Thistlefoot in a mob. During the assault, Winifred refuses Bellatine's order to retreat, proving her autonomy. Isaac, paralyzed by guilt over the death of his closest friend, Benji Short, hides during the attack and then flees on foot, leaving a pressed nickel on the windowsill, honoring his code of always leaving a token in exchange for what he takes.

In the loft, the Duskbreakers recognize the mural's soldiers as bearing the Longshadow Man's face, confirming that the house and its pursuer have been linked for over a century. Isaac, hitchhiking through a snowstorm, collapses and nearly freezes to death. Before losing consciousness, he experiences a vision of Gedenkrovka, the ancestral shtetl, or small Jewish town, where ghostly residents chant their own names to resist being forgotten. Thistlefoot senses his failing heartbeat and sprints to him. Bellatine channels the Embering into his body, willing him back to life.

Thistlefoot then narrates the full history. Baba Yaga was a cantankerous widow in Gedenkrovka who sold eggs and raised two daughters. In December 1919, soldiers and local collaborators launched a pogrom, a coordinated massacre targeting the Jewish community, burning the town and killing 42 people. Hiding with her daughters, Baba Yaga smothered baby Malka's cries to avoid detection but pressed too hard, and the infant died. In grief, Baba Yaga absorbed the soldiers' fire, channeled it into the house, and Thistlefoot stood on newly born chicken legs and ran. Malka's body was placed in the cookstove, where her flame has burned ever since. The pogrom's collective horror coalesced into the Longshadow Man, not a person but a traumatic event made manifest.

Bellatine, now accepting her power, awakens the Fool puppet, which confirms the history. The group determines that the Longshadow Man intends to complete his massacre on its anniversary by destroying Thistlefoot. They stop running and prepare for a final confrontation in the Oklahoma flatlands.

When the Longshadow Man enters Thistlefoot, the siblings trap the dybbuk, a malevolent possessing spirit of Jewish folklore, in a circle of salt and begin reciting psalms, but he shatters his blue bottle, releasing smokefed poison that overwhelms them both. Bellatine Embers the entire cast of The Drowning Fool to life, burning the poison from her system, then grabs Isaac's hand and clears his mind the same way.

Isaac realizes the Longshadow Man's power depends on erasure. Drawing on the names he encountered in his vision of Gedenkrovka, he shapeshifts into the pogrom's victims one after another, declaring each name aloud. With each transformation, the Longshadow Man destabilizes. Isaac's final transformation is into Baba Yaga herself. The crying of baby Malka draws him to the cookstove; when he opens the door, her century-old flame soars free and passes through the Longshadow Man, consuming him. The liberated fire also engulfs Thistlefoot. The siblings flee and kneel in the grass, bearing witness as the house burns.

In the epilogue, Thistlefoot declares that a story cannot be burned. Isaac gives Benji a proper funeral by a railroad, placing a flattened nickel in the casket as a final token, and joins the Duskbreaker Band. Bellatine builds a puppet theater in the Vermont woods with Winifred as her partner, Embering the puppets openly. Each show begins: "Once, not so very long ago, there was a fierce lion and her two daughters, who lived in the most marvelous house. The lion's name was Baba Yaga. And this is her story" (428).