Title: Orchid Child
Author: Victoria Costello
Publisher: Between the Lines Publishing
Pub date: June 2023
Genre: Fiction, Magic Realism
Format: Paperback, eBook
“Victoria Costello’s family saga goes beyond the mapping of intergenerational trauma by imagining a tragedy-plagued Irish American family’s youngest member, an orchid child, halting the chain of suffering that came before him, by tapping into his neurodiversity and the ancient wisdom of his ancestors.”
ABOUT THE BOOK
As a neuroscientist, Kate’s life is well-ordered and based on logic. Except when it comes to her married lab director. Kate loses her job when their affair is discovered, sending her orderly life in Manhattan out the window. To make matters worse, Kate’s family presses her to accept responsibility for her fifteen-year-old nephew, Teague, an orchid child, who hears voices and talks to trees but rarely people. Determined to salvage her career, Kate agrees to conduct a study in West Ireland where hostile townsfolk rebuff her probe of their historically high rate of schizophrenia. When a local chief Druid identifies Teague’s odd perceptions as the gift of second sight, a bewildered Kate is thrust on a trail of madness, magic, and armed rebellion leading to her own grandparents who, she discovers were banished as traitors from the same town.
Kate’s investigations force a confrontation with the chief Druid, endangering Teague’s life and putting her in even stranger territory, where ancient Celtic mysticism intersects with 21st century neurodiversity, and the act of witnessing old wounds has the power to heal suffering past and present—even hers—if she can accept the limits of science and the power of ancestral ties.
About the Author:

Victoria Costello is an award-winning writer and educator living in Ashland, Oregon. Her non-fiction work has appeared in various publications, including the Huffington Post, and her debut title, A Lethal Inheritance, A Mother Uncovers the Science Behind Three Generations of Mental Illness was released in 2012 with Prometheus books. Orchid Child is her first work of fiction.