Column: Chula Vista author Jennifer Givhan summons magic and memories with ‘River Woman, River Demon’

In the years before she started writing her latest novel, author and poet Jennifer Givhan was not in a good place.

She was a stressed-out working mother trying take care of two children while teaching courses at a community college. She was also dealing with postpartum depression, which triggered traumatic memories of violent experiences from her past.

During that challenging time, the award-winning writer and lover of Latinx literature found comfort in an unexpected place.

In those difficult hours, Givhan went to the dark heart of the best-sellers list, where thrillers like “Gone Girl,” “Girl on the Train” and “Then She Was Gone” helped her see the literary light at the end of the emotional tunnel.

“I was just devouring these books because there were unstable female protagonists, and they weren’t being judged because they were telling their own stories. And I so loved that,” Givhan, 38, said during an interview from her home in Chula Vista.

“I loved that in the worlds of these novels, the women were so complicated. And yeah, sometimes they did terrible things, and there was freedom in that. It was kind of like exposure therapy for me. It was knowing that we can step up to the darkness, but that doesn’t mean we’re dark.”

The result of Givhan’s thriller binge is her third novel, “River Woman, River Demon.” The novel — which comes out on Oct. 4 — kicks off in classic thriller fashion with the discovery of a dead body and the introduction of artist Eva Santos Moon, the kind of unstable female narrator that poolside page-turners are made of.

Eva drinks too much. She suffers from blackouts. She is haunted by the ghost of a dead childhood friend. And the events leading up to the discovery of the body on her property are murky, even to her.

Eva has all of the volatile character traits that readers look for in a thriller heroine, along with a few qualities that her Mexican-American and Indigenous creator found were in too-short supply.

Eva is a Chicana glass artist who also practices the ancient traditions of brujería (witchcraft) and curanderismo (healing). She reads Tarot cards, brews medicinal teas and cooks up batches of Hot Foot protection powder.

Her spell-work may not or may not be enough to save herself or her family, but her presence could help correct an imbalance in the thriller-novel universe.

“Almost all of these (thriller) protagonists were White women,” said Givhan, who will be discussing “River Woman, River Demon” at the Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore in the Midway District on Oct. 4. “Even if they grew up in meager beginnings, they became affluent and moved to New York or Chicago or London. And I thought, ‘Well, where are the women and girls like me and my Mom and my daughter?’ So I wrote one.”

Born just outside of Los Angeles and raised in the Imperial Valley city of Brawley, Givhan grew up in a house full of words and magic. Her mother was a devout Catholic who was also well versed in Mexican folklore and culture. Her father was a high-school teacher who would recite the poems that his Irish-Canadian mother recited to him. Her parents, who now live in Albuquerque, were big on the whole family — middle-child Givhan and her two brothers — reading together.

Givhan pursued her inherited love of language in college, getting her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from Cal State Fullerton and a Master of Fine Arts from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina.

Her award-winning poetry collections include 2016’s “Landscape With Headless Mama,” 2017’s “Protection Spell,” and 2018’s “Girl With Death Mask.” She moved into fiction with 2019’s dystopian adventure “Trinity Sight,” followed a year later with “Jubilee,” a surreal tale of trauma and survival with touches of magical realism. Both books won multiple awards and were enthusiastically reviewed in Ms. magazine, The Washington Post, Publishers Weekly and other outlets.

Now comes “River Woman, River Demon,” which was recently nominated for a New Mexico-Arizona Book Award. As we watch Eva struggle to defend her husband, protect her kids and fight off the ghosts in her head and the gaslighting enemies in her life, we get to see what happens when a literary sorceress throws poetry, magic, motherhood and misogyny into a cauldron, turns up the genre heat and lets it all boil.

“The hero’s journey traditionally has been for men, and I’m always looking to show women as heroes and to tell their journeys,” said Givhan, who moved with her husband and two teenagers to San Diego from Albuquerque earlier this year to research a novel set in and around the Salton Sea

“Eva is trying to get back to her innate self, and I hope that by the end, she has. And I hope that you feel deeply for her and are invested in her, and maybe even have fallen in love with her a little bit.”

Givhan discusses “River Woman, River Demon” with Sarina Dahlan at 7 p.m. Oct. 4 at the Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore, 3555 Rosencrans St., No. 107, Midway District. Go to mystgalaxy.com for information.