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Reviewed by Heather Osborne for Readers' Favorite
The Catherine Wheel by Niya White is a compilation of three short stories. The first story is called, like the book, The Catherine Wheel. Mary Catherine Wheeler and her parents come to a small town with a strange ritual. Every November, they reenact the martyrdom of Saint Catherine, recreating the macabre ritual of how she was bound to a wheel and tortured before being beheaded. Mary finds this ritual very unsettling so when she is pressed into participating, strange things begin to happen. The second story is called Rain on a Tuesday Afternoon. It is a brief, emotional episode in the life of a person who has faced much adversity, culminating in her coming into a sense of understanding and peace with herself. The final story is called Mama Cecil Says. A victim of the war crimes in Uganda finds herself face to face with the cruel man who raped her and murdered her father. She makes a fatal decision to avenge the life of her parent, as well as those who were killed in her village.
Out of the three stories, I have to say that I enjoyed the first and the third the best. Miss White interwove history and fiction in the first, The Catherine Wheel. The topic was something I never thought to explore. I found it fascinating that the town practiced this odd ritual. It almost reminded me of The Lottery in the style and execution, although with a much happier ending. Mama Cecil Says tugged at my heart because every war crime victim struggles to cope with the things that have befallen them. Taking something modern, like the conflict in Uganda, reminds us that these things still happen in the world today. The Catherine Wheel is a simple collection of short stories with deep meaning.
