In many ways, Kim Echlin’s second novel continues the themes of her first: Elephant Winter set the progress of a mother’s death against the incongruous backdrop of elephants in an Ontario winter. In that book Echlin delved into pachyderm speech patterns, decoding (fictionally) a complex non-verbal system. Dagmar’s Daughter too is about ties between mothers and daughters, and a form of communication transcending words – in this case, music.

Dagmar’s Daughter departs from Elephant Winter’s eloquent realism into what might be called maritime Celtic magic realism. There are no doubt ordinary folk in Millstone Nether, a settlement in the St. Lawrence gulf, but those we come to know are far from normal. Their “mongrel language” is cobbled from English, Gaelic, and French, but their mother tongue is music. This is a community of powerful female energies – though men have uses, for fishing, impregnating, and music-making.

Central to the tale are two girls, Moll and Norea, the first a shipwrecked half-ghost from the mainland, the other a red-haired Irish runaway. Despite Moll’s predilection for infanticide, women go to her for cures, though the remedy can be worse than the complaint. The more maternal Norea gives birth to a daughter, Dagmar, with uncanny powers over nature. Dagmar in turn gives birth to the beautiful, gifted Nyssa. When this daughter is spirited away by a much older man, Dagmar’s grief plunges Millstone Nether into climatic disaster.

At times, Dagmar’s Daughter feels as much an epic poem as a novel. Echlin uses old forms of storytelling, blending myth and lyrical language to translate music into words. So much beautiful language and fantastic imagery at first seem self-conscious, but when the narrative picks up speed, drawing readers into the strange world of Millstone Nether, the power of the story takes hold and doesn’t let go.