In the Land of Winter

Wicca practitioner Pippa Rede loses her only daughter, nine-year-old Winterbelle, to representatives of the State of Maine in the droll, magical seventh novel (Tex and Molly in the Afterlife, etc.) from New England's answer to Tom Robbins. Betrayed to the authorities by her aunt, fired from her job at the local florist's and evicted from her house (all shortly before Christmas), Pippa soon finds herself a Job among witches. In order to get her daughter back, she must learn to become more of a witch than ever before, to take on such impassive foes as the Department of Family Services, the Christian right and all those fighting against QROST (quasi-ritualized occultic sexual traumatization), the syndrome-of-the-week. In Pippa's ragtag corner are the likes of hippie throwback lawyer Arthur Torvid and a guy who may or may not be a werewolf. Despite patches of self-conscious, coy prose, Grant delivers an entertaining fairy tale of religious persecution--and a cautionary tale about society's penchant for fad diagnoses and back-seat mothering. Author tour. (Nov.)