Summary: Thistlefoot is a beautifully written book based on Jewish history and legend (and an amazing story to boot).

If you're into Jewish/Russian history and legend, especially pre-Holocaust Eastern European Jewish history, I cannot recommend this book enough. This book is kind of based on the legend of Baba Yaga and her house with chicken legs from Russian lore, but it's also about so much more. The immigrant experience. Intergenerational trauma and how it messes up families. Pogroms (attacks on Jews) and antisemitism. Memory.

Despite the at-times heavy subject matter, it can be kind of funny at parts, and the house with chicken legs, a narrator, is very well-written. It speaks Yiddish in theory, and the way Nethercott communicated that is great. It is the most Jewish house voice I have ever read. Which isn't a very big group, but I think it'll be holding that title for a long time. "Forgive my appearance, my shutters crooked as an old zayde's teeth, my fine walls dripping with paint. I am a work in progress, as are we all, yes?...Would you begrudge an old house it's nature? Of course you wouldn't." I can hear that voice and all the stereotypical Jewish grandma traits that might follow it: "Not like Moishele. Would you believe it, he didn't become a doctor! No, no, no, he became some artist! An artist! I worked so hard, yes? He was raised right, yes? So he listens to his mame when she tells him to become a doctor, yes? No! And does he call his poor mame and tell her how her grandchildren, Yosele--he just became a bar mitzvah--and Mirele and Rivkele and Yankele and little Ruthie are doing? No! Oy, Moishele...he's a nogoodnik. Not like Esther Goldberg's kids. Yossie became a scientist and Mendele became a doctor and Mordy became a lawyer - and all she does is kvetch!"

The book isn't super Jewish, but if you happen to know about Jewish history and culture, or if it's your family's history - as it is mine - you'll probably get more out of it than if you don't. ( )

The hardcover edition of Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott is attention grabbing (book design by: Christopher M Zucker). I found it by scanning the “new book” section of my local Barnes & Noble bookstore. I absolutely love finding new books this way - browsing, looking at covers, titles and reading the inside flaps - to see books of interest that I may not find otherwise.

In this case, the house with chicken legs immediately became familiar to what I had fairly recently learned about in the folklore of Baba Yaga and the connection to Ukraine. In brief, as a stitching enthusiast, I found that many needleart patterns on Etsy are created by Eastern European artists and particularly from Ukraine. After Russia attacked Ukraine, starting a war against the civilian populations, the international Etsy community looked for ways to support the Ukrainian artists. I found a few, including StitchyPrincess who's store has some designs featuring Baba Yaga and some of the house with chicken legs (see: https://www.etsy.com/listing/873462869/baba-yaga-witch-cross-stitch-pattern?clic.... The Thistlefoot book flap description caught my interest in promising to bring some of the Ukrainian folklore about Baba Yaga to life and include a modern setting in the United States. Additionally, Thistlefoot was on the list as top Fantasy new book for 2022. I was hooked and bought the book.

Thistlefoot did not disappoint; it is quite a page turner. First, we are introduced to the Yaga siblings in the modern day United States and learn a bit about their current lives. It is the inheritance of a mysterious package from Russia that connects them to the past and reveals that they are the great-great grandchildren of Baba Yaga herself. The inheritance is Thistlefoot - the ancestral Yaga family home with chicken legs. Its arrival in the United States starts them off on a new path of their lives, helps them to understand themselves and tap into the pain and trauma of ancestral memories. The story includes a great blend of magic, fantasy and folklore. Sometimes dark, GennaRose is able to connect the horrors of the real Jewish trauma that is carried forward to the present Jewish descendants.

The book is definitely worth reading and I can see why it tops the list for new Fantasy in 2022. The book is so well written that it would be excellent on audiobooks. I haven’t listened to that edition, but would expect it to be delightful. I look forward to reading more from GennaRose Nethercott in the future. ( )

"Sometimes the story you need is not the story you might want. I respect this. But I warn you, there are no jokes in this story. Yes?"

What a beautiful, heart-breaking, heart-warming story. I was hooked from the first 100 pages, curious abuot this brother and sister. Clearly they had abilities that I didn't understand and I craved to know more of what they could do. The house absolutely wove around my heart and I loved every moment of that chicken legged wonder.

But the underlying current of this story, the rage and the cruelty, is so well done. It's a plague you can feel on every page and yet, you can see the love and the family and the devotion come through. There are things that are so ugly, they leave a scar after they are gone. This is the story of one such scar, but told with so much love and folklore that it is easy to read and easy to love and, absolutely, hands down, easy to read again and give 5 favorite stars for surprising me. I loved this one. I hope you pick it up and love it too! ( )

For sffbc feb 2024. Shoulda noted the ref. to American Gods in the blurb and not even tried it. I imagine there's some redemption or something by the end, given how people are sighing over it, but too much wickedness, too dismal, right off the bat, with a warning from the author that (more) bad stuff is going to happen.

Still, it's clever to set a Yaga story in the American West... the current west, with cell phones etc.

I need this book tattooed on my body and in my mind. I adored this so much. I couldn't stop thinking about this book. Every aspect of it was stunning. The characters were amazing and the amount of time dedicated to them was amazing. I truly cared about all of them. The ending got me crying of course because obviously Thistlefoot was my favorite. I also love how the story was told. I won't stop talking and recommending this book. I'm also so glad this was the book I buddy read with Sara. ( )

Thistlefoot has everything I ever want in a book: casually queer characters, a whimsical and creative premise, Jewish history, magical realism, a beautiful and lyrical writing style, fun sibling dynamics, and an exciting plot. It explores the meaning of folklore, assimilation, migration, memory, trauma, and how these things all tie together. Sometimes Thistlefoot is cozy, charming, and hilarious; sometimes it's a dark and devastating horror book. At all times, it's enjoyable. ( )

What a superb read! The characters are charming, the story is compelling and surprising, and the whole thing is written with what is unmistakably a poet's flair. The supernatural and fantastical merge with folksy Americana, all in a modern setting. I loved every minute of Thistefoot. ( )

TBR

As the cover of this genre-defying novel suggests, Thistlefoot is about a house with chicken feet and a garden on its roof. But it is much more than that: it is about preserving the memories of those history has erased, a fairy tale, modern folklore woven with old Russian-Jewish folklore, family. The modern day, American siblings at the center of this tale are descendants of Russian Jews who escaped the pogrom that wiped their shtetl from the map, carrying the genetic memory of the unspeakable things done to people they knew or that they did themselves in the face of so much evil. The novel is inspired by the Baba Yaga tale: a witch who lives in the woods of Eastern Europe in a house that stands on chicken legs – that tale is woven through the novel told from the house, Thistlefoot’s, perspective. But it is also revealed through the modern-day Yaga siblings, through the memory of suffering passed down in their genes, which animate extraordinary abilities, or curses.

Ms. Nethercott’s writing is beautiful and she crafted many memorable passages containing astute observations about life. I felt some characters were a little puzzling in the way they were manifested, but overall, this strange, tragic, wonderful book was compelling from the first page to the last.
( )

I DNFd this book at the 68% mark and here's why:
Ok... well, please hold off on the lynching until I finish explaining. On the one hand the premise had tons of potential... potential for days and days, in fact it was so promising that I kept coming back to it again and again hoping it just needed some more of my time... NOPE... it just slogged on and I dreaded each time I chose to come back to it. I even bought it on Audible hoping a fresh voice would help this magical tale ensnare me but alas, it was not meant to be. C’est la vie,

Now, on the other hand, I'm not saying that the writing was terrible... it was... nice. It was decent EXCEPT it was also blatantly, unapologetically, savagely, overtly descriptive AND then there was Isaac... Isaac was tough to like and not in that misunderstood, morally gray, relateable underdog/antihero kind of way. He just rubbed me the wrong way and I wanted to skip over his parts... skimming urges are a surefire sign of a laggy, boring, faltering read. Dreading spending time doing my favorite activity is no bueno so it left me with little choice. You'd think that a book about Baba Yaga's decendants would be chock full of Baba Yaga or at least a comprehensive magic system that's explained. Whelp, nope, not here. With how descriptive everything else was, you'd think that EVERYTHING would be explained, and maybe it was explained in the last 32% of the book, but I think I gave it the good old college try.

This was a chaotic read. There were multiple POVs, and they jumped around without warning or preamble. I relied on picking up clues/names in order to discern who's voice I was listening to. AND for a book populated with characters possessing magic, they sure were flat. Now, I think that Bellatine did save the tale (as much as it could be rescued from itself). If the book had cut out the insane amount of descriptives and been only about Bellatine and this chicken leg facilitated mobile home, I think I would have been able to finish. I did like how the book highlighted the plight of the Jews and some of the antisemitic discrimination that they unbelievably/tragically still experience even until this very day.

On to the World... the world building (minus the descriptive overload) was decent. It's just hard to get fully immersed in a book that devotes chapters to mundane things... how much time do you expect us to devote to hearing about (chapter's worth of) Bellatine's hands... no action, no anything... just descriptions about hands albeit magical hands but hands nonetheless.

Overall:
I know I'm in the minority here, but decent writing, okay world building, and a noncapitalized upon (yet interesting) premise weren't enough to snatch and hold onto my attention thus the DNF and the low rating. I feel slightly guilty not finishing this book especially since I was so graciously given a copy of it to read for free but I even bought the audiobook so I can say, with a (mostly) clear conscience that I tried... I really did.

~ Sorry

*** I received an advance review copy for free from NetGalley, and I am leaving this review voluntarily. *** ( )

3 and a half stars. this book is ambitious, trying to fold in Baba Yaga fairy tales with hobo narratives, crossed with dybbuk horror tales arising out of Russian historical pogroms. but the author (to use one of her own metaphors) can't quite make all the wooden parts join together into a coherent narrative without using nails to force everything to fit. it's also very unevenly written, with way too much explained that needn't be, in both the story and the line-by-line writing, and too many characters that don't really come alive enough to care about them. in the end, for me it just didn't work. i applaud the ambition (extra half a star for that), but i kept having to talk myself into finishing it. ( )

This book packs such an emotional punch and had me sobbing through the last few chapters.

It is a Baba Yaga origin story that follows two of her descendants, Isaac and Bellatine. We get flashback chapters from the perspective of Baba Yaga's house, which were my favorite parts! This is a modern fantasy novel that manages to seamlessly weave in historical aspects of early 20th century Russia.

It covers some heavy topics-the pogroms in the Russian Empire are a major plot point. It also deals with self-hate and accepting yourself.

This book gave me strong The Diviners vibes and I would recommend it to anyone who has read and loved that series. ( )

“What is memory if not a ghost?”

It starts with estranged siblings, a magical house with chicken legs, and puppets; it ends with burgeoning love, a newfound home, and more puppets. And in between? In between is a journey across America and back through time, to explore themes of immigration, inner magic, and the remnant ghosts of time and memory. It all starts when the Yaga siblings, Bellatine and Isaac, inherit their maternal great grandmother’s house from Ukraine - which they soon discover is far more than just a house. Not only is the house that of the mythical Baba Yaga (one of my favourite folkloric characters), but it is the last living remnant of a historical event that was so brutal that it is still causing ripples in time. As in all good folk tales, the Yagas don’t get possession of the house without some complications. Not only are they plagued with the foibles of their own hereditary magical powers (the ability to shapechange for Isaac and the bringing the inanimate alive for Bellatine), which cause problems in their every day lives, but as they set out to tour their family puppet show across America their real foe is revealed. The Longshadow man is a memory brought to life by the same events that woke the Yaga house (aka Thistlefoot), and like his forebears he is bent on erasing any trace of the community that used to play home to the Yagas and their Jewish neighbours. The story is a rollicking adventure, but Nethercott artfully weaves Jewish folklore and European history throughout to create a mythical tale that treads a unique border between the reality that is and the reality that could have been. Like the stories of Baba Yaga herself, this story is a dark reckoning with memory that walks Thistlefoot out of an idyllic future and into a place of truthful remembering - even if we are never quite sure we have the full story. ( )

This is an entertaining take on the Baba Yaga legend. Two estranged siblings are called to New York to receive an inheritance from a European relative. When they open the giant shipping container, they find it contains a house on legs - the mythical house of Baba Yaga. They take the house on tour to put on puppet shows and earn money, but soon discover that mysterious people are in pursuit of the house. The siblings each have magical powers: the brother can shapeshift to become other people, and the sister can animate lifeless things by touching them. They both have complicated relationships with their powers, but must learn to embrace them to overcome the dark forces that threaten them.

All in all, this is an entertaining book, and reasonably creative, if somewhat predictable. ( )

I'm not sure my review for this book will be very eloquent, but I only just finished it and am in my feels. So this may be a more stream of consciousness review. I went into this read, having not heard [or remembered hearing] anything about it, be it positive or negative. It left me hesitant, but I can honestly say this was not what I expected in the best way.

This story was amazingly bizarre. Or bizarrely amazing. I'm not sure which.
This story is about time, trauma, massacres, living, dying, and never being forgotten.

We followed multiple protagonists from different time periods who are all commected by blood and trauma; both literally and figuratively. It's told in "present day" and a centry prior, not to mention the side stories that all added up to an incredible ending, that was very bittersweet

Perhaps it's just the mood I'm in, but this book really got to me. It hit me hard. It was dark and traumatic and sad. Some of the stories just broke me. All of the characters are beautifully flawed. The stories were so darkly whimsical. This was just beautiful to me. ( )

Thistlefoot is a whimsical, though very often dark, novel based on Eastern European mythology with magical realism the rule of the day. Isaac and Ballatine Yaga are brother and sister, Jewish young adults living in more or less modern day U.S. and the grandchildren of a refugee from anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia. They have been raised on the road, working with their parents in an itinerant traveling puppet show. At 17, Isaac has run off to discover himself via a life on the road. Seven years later, the siblings learn that their grandmother has died and left them an inheritance that is being delivered from Eastern Europe. The sibling reunite on the New York City pier where their inheritance is being delivered. This inheritance turns out to be an entire house. But this house is alive, if not sentient, and it is mobile, for it has legs and can both walk and run. And it can understand commands, as long as they are delivered in Yiddish. Soon they also learn that a being with evil powers is hunting the house and so, now, them. The story is based on the Slavic folklore of Baba Yaga, a woodland witch who is sometimes evil but sometimes a helper.

So there’s plenty of willing suspension of disbelieve needed to enjoy this tale. That would be fine with me, if it weren’t for the fact that I found the writing, on a sentence and paragraph level, sadly lacking. This is a first novel for Nethercott, and she doesn’t seem to be in control of her prose at all. Most damaging, for me, at any rate, is the fact that the pages are full of cliches and lazy language. People glower. Their eyes become daggers. Pain scurries up people’s spines. Opening the book to a random page, one can find this: “Tom’s knuckles paled as they tightened on the wheel. His foot sank into the gas pedal, grave as a pocket filled with stones. . . .”

At one point we read, “The street was Dickensian, as if recreated from some Victorian era slum.” Well, but either you think I know what “Dickensian” means or you don’t. If you think I do, you don’t need the second part of the sentence. If you think I don’t, leave out the reference. And so forth. It’s unfortunate, because the storytelling and the imaginative thinking behind it are pretty good, especially in the book’s second half. The horrors of the pogroms and of lives cut short. The value of bearing witness and the illusory qualities of time and place. These and other elements make for a nice, thought-provoking narrative, as the story of the house and its pursuer are unfolded. Or they would have for me, if only I didn’t feel like I was getting poked in the eye with cliches and empty metaphors every paragraph. Well, I know that readers respond to these sorts of issues differently, and some folks just don’t care about them. Those lucky readers will enjoy this book much more than I did. Still, 3 ½ stars from me for the storytelling moxie. ( )

I had a hard time getting into this book. I have to devolgue that I didn't finish it. I was looking forward to this book but felt that it jumped around from past to present to much. I also felt that it dragged due to, to much detail. I do think the author is a good writer.The book just felt like it dragged and I had a hard time picking it back up again. The characters were solid.

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I borrowed a copy of this on ebook from my library.

Thoughts: This is an intriguing book that focuses on a lot of different things at once. I enjoyed the beautiful, unique way it was written but at times got a bit frustrated with how much the story jumped around.

The story follows the Yaga siblings. Bellatine is a woodworker who has graduated college and is starting to make a stable life for herself. Isaac is her brother and is a drifter. Isaac drifts from place to place taking what he wants from the world. They get notice that they have received an inheritance in the form of a chicken-legged house. In the end they make a deal to tour with it for a year, after that Bellatine will settle down with it. Their plans are sent askew when they find out the Longshadow Man is trying to hunt both them and the house down.

This was an intriguing story and very well done. I loved all the creativity and description here and the book is very beautifully written. The book jumps between many different points of view and times. Mostly we hear from Bellatine or Isaac. With Bellatine we mostly stay in the current day. Isaac alternates between telling stories of his travels and his modern day activities. We also hear from the house which tells different known stories of its origins but also starts to tell us its true history.

This is a world similar to our own but things like houses with feet aren't unheard-of; inanimate objects in this world also occasionally develop human parts. Also, both Bellatine and Isaac have power of a sort. Bellatine can awaken inanimate objects and Isaac can mimic other living people. There's enough magic here that this goes beyond magic realism into all out fantasy.

While I enjoyed this a ton I did struggle a bit with how many changes in both time and POV the story had. I was also a bit let down by how things ended. The reveal of the true history of the house and the end of the story sucked a lot of the magic out of it for me and made me feel really sad and let down. This book is less about the mythology of Baba Yaga and more about the importance of keeping memories and stories alive.

My Summary (4.5/5): Overall I really enjoyed this. I loved the creativity here and enjoyed the beautiful writing style. It was intriguing to puzzle out the story between all the different characters and time frames. However, this also broke up the story and made it a bit hard to follow. I do think this is an exceptional story and it was much different than other books I have read. I enjoyed delving into an alternate history of Baba Yaga and her tale. I would recommend this and plan on keeping tabs on Nethercott to see what she writes in the future. ( )

I don't like to leave reviews if I haven't completed the book, but I'm going to do that here as a warning to myself not to come back and as a caution to other readers who, like me, might be tempted by the description on the jacket.
I'm giving two stars here because the author seems to be a good enough writer. There are some descriptions that are quite good, some word pairings that are beautiful, in fact. But the story is so heavy, it drags, meanders, is unbelieveable and has characters who are particularly unappealing. I suppose it's meant to be a fantastical tale of adventure, weaving together myth (not sure why the Baba Yaga story and Jewish life are interwoven, as they really have nothing to do with each other) and the past and modern life. But I wasn't interested, and I found myself dreading picking up the book. Halfway through I complained to my daughter: "I really don't want to read this." She reminded me that I finished college many years ago so I am no longer obligated to read books I'm not enjoying, so I'm done with this one. ( )

Thistlefoot takes place in a world about a step to the side of our own: one where houses in danger can sprout legs to run away, but where the legacies of historical horrors like pogroms still haunt the descendants of their survivors. American siblings Bellatine and Isaac Yaga inherit a walking cottage—and some other, less tangible gifts—from their great-great-grandmother back in Europe, but soon find that the house is being pursued by a terrible evil in the form of the Longshadow Man. GennaRose Nethercott has conjured up a dark fantasy story which is part love-letter to eastern European Jewish folklore and heritage, part a grappling with a legacy of inherited trauma and the duty of memory.

There are some weaknesses here of the kind you might expect to find in a first novel—the prose would have been more successful if Nethercott had dialled things back 10-15% or so; Isaac always felt like he belonged more in something set during the Dust Bowl than in the present day—but the book is engaging enough and different to rise above those issues for me. Nethercott shows a talent for balancing humour and imagination and violence, and I'm excited to see what she does next. ( )

I’m sitting here, just having finished Thistlefoot, and my head is filled with the beauty of this wonderful book. I’m at a loss for words.

Thistlefoot takes the Russian legend of Baba Yaga, and turns that story into one of Jewish origins. Issac and Bellatine Yaga are siblings who inherit the legendary house of Baba Yaga, the house on chicken legs, from their great great grandmother, who kept the house in storage in the Ukraine for seventy years and bequeathed it to the youngest Yagas. The siblings grew up in a household that gave puppet shows, and the pair decides to take the house on a tour and recreate the puppet shows they gave in their childhood. Both Isaac and Bellatine have their issues, and as the book progresses, we learn their backstories, and also that of the house and the puppets. They are also pursued by the Longshadow Man, a mysterious figure who followed the house from Ukraine, and who seems bent on the destruction of Yaga’s house, for reasons unknown.

I reveled in the excellence of the writing. There are moments of sheer beauty in the book that just took my breath away. The plot is solid and well constructed, and the characters are some of the most finely drawn personalities I’ve ever encountered in a novel. They truly came to life. And the ending…let’s just say it blew me away and left me in tears.

Without a doubt, Thistlefoot is one of the best books I’ve read recently.

My gratitude goes out to Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, and to Netgalley, for providing me an ARC of this excellent novel. ( )

I think I went in with very high expectations in this story and was a little surprised it was different than I thought. The writing was very good and descriptive, but I didn't find myself drawn to reading this at every chance I got. Although this is a modern-day fairytale, the theme was intense and perhaps heavier than I was expecting. The story centers around an ancient chicken-footed house that was owned by Baba Yaga and is gifted to Isaac and Bellatine, estranged siblings who come together after being separated to claim their inheritance. The story centers around the violent history of pogroms, evil, humanity and the importance of memory and being a witness to your ancestors.
The book does stay with you long after you have finished it. I received a complimentary eBook from Netgalley.com in exchange for a review. ( )

“My name is Baba Yaga. You will not forget me.”

Reading this book made me realize this might be the first book I've read that is based on myths from my culture. Baba Yaga is a fascinating character that we've all heard stories about, but I rarely see any new stories involving her. I'm glad that's changed.

This is a great fantasy that follows two siblings that are descended from Baba Yaga. Nothing about them really makes sense, but it makes sense in the weird whimsical world they're in. It's really well written and often reminded me of Neil Gaiman's writing. This does have it's dark moments and I'd consider it horror as much as fantasy.

Thank you netgalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for giving me an advanced review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. ( )

THISTLEFOOT, by GennaRose Nethercott from Anchor, is a modern day fairy tale steeped in Jewish lore, all based around the legend of Baga Yaga and her chicken-legged home.

The estranged Yaga twins, Isaac and Bellatrine, are brought back together when they are bequeathed a family heirloom from a long deceased ancestor. This heirloom is the chicken-legged, sentient house which Bellatrine names Thistlefoot. Coming from a family troupe of puppeteers, Isaac decides they should take Thistlefoot on tour across the United States and perform their family’s signature show, The Drowned Fool, to raise money to escape his debts. What neither sibling knows, though, is they are being pursued by the Longshadow Man, who is leaving a path of death behind him on his quest to capture Thistlefoot for himself.

I’m not familiar with the legend of Baba Yaga beyond the most basic understanding, but I feel that Nethercott has done her research and reworked the legend nicely as a story of Jewish survival. While sometimes loaded down with an excess of purple prose, the story is still wildly engaging. Nethercott has that rare ability to write a story with characters who seem to exist somewhere out of time; while the story seems to be taking place in the now, the characters have this timeless quality about them and could be existing in the then and now simultaneously, especially Isaac. He could be living as a vaudeville performer in the 1920s just as easily as a puppeteer performer in the 2020s.

I wasn’t as sure that I was going to like this at first (unfortunately, the purple prose really can drag the story down at times), but ultimately this turned out to be a great read for me. A huge thank you to @netgalley and @vintageanchorbooks for an eARC in exchange for an honest review. THISTLEFOOT will be available September 13, 2022.

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I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

This book is about the chicken-footed house of the infamous Baba Yaga, brought into modern America, but even more its about humanity, psychology, evil, and survival. Though the books slips from perspective to perspective like someone changing clothes, it principally follows the two Yaga siblings: Isaac, a wayfaring rogue with a knack for impersonating other people, and Bellatine, who works with wood but takes care with what else she touches because of the dread potential in her hands. They know they have Jewish ancestry going back to Russia, but little about it, so when the siblings are reunited when they are bequeathed the chicken-footed house, they are taken aback by their weird fortune. Things get weirder from there, as it soon becomes clear that a dark force has also come from Russia and is hunting them down.

Foremost, the praise: the prose is gorgeous. There were multiple lines that made me say, "Wow" out loud. The book could be read and enjoyed for its language alone. However, this is not a gentle read. Major trigger warnings apply here, as there is a deep exploration of despair, death, and pogroms. It covers brutal subject matter in a heart-wrenching way.

Other aspects bothered me, though. Isaac is the kind of callous rogue who repulses me on a deep level. I struggled to get into the book because of his chapters through much of the book. The story is also surprisingly linear. It delivered little in the way of surprises through the end. Some major questions around the whole initial set-up of Thistlefoot (the house) and the bad guy coming to America were never answered for me, either. ( )