Seeking community but finding a cult in the tense, compelling ‘The Witches of Bellinas’

In the California coastal town of Bellinas, cultlike residents follow Max, a tech billionaire turned charismatic founder of an artistic community. “The Witches of Bellinas,” J. Nicole Jones’ debut novel, is the confession narrated by Tansy, a recent transplant to Bellinas, as she awaits judgment from the populace after her refusal to conform leads to disaster. Jones, whose memoir, “Low Country,” received critical acclaim, has written a compelling book, drawing from our chaotic reality to create a dystopia where individual thought is extinguished for the art colony’s harmony.

While Bellinas is imaginary, a similar artists colony existed in the early 20th century in Carmel that was riven by jealousy, love triangles and a suspicious suicide. In Bellinas, the tech mogul turned leader announces that the town is a new Bohemian Club, where he and his influencer wife, Mia, welcome their friends to live their “best, creative lives” while worshiping “the mysteries and splendors of the natural world.”

(Catapult)

Tansy’s new marriage to her long-term boyfriend, Guy, is off to a rocky start, and after an initial visit to Bellinas, where his cousin Mia lives, the pair decide that leaving behind hated jobs in New York City and starting over will solve their dissatisfaction. And despite some doubts about this “Bohemian Eden,” with “expensive dresses and avocados instead of apples,” Tansy is drawn in. “[W]hen faced with a repetition of circumstances, I, as a woman since Eve, defer always to the mantra we are born knowing by heart — maybe this time will be different.”

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Guy embraces their new lives, but Tansy struggles to feel that she belongs. The other women come to her rescue, offering companionship in place of the alienation she feels. “This is how it happens for most people who find themselves part of cults that pass for communities, whether by their own ambivalence or by the trappings of circumstance,” Tansy says. “Who wakes up and says to themselves, ‘I’m going to join a cult today’? Hardly anybody, that’s who.” Instead, Tansy notes that cults happen because of quotidian interactions: “Agreements are tacitly made between acts of kindness or oaths of friendship. Between the act of sharing vague dreams of a community that will bring love and light and whatever else to the world ... .”

Among the wealthy white residents of Bellinas, money will never be an issue. The men spend their days illegally gathering abalone and bonding over dude-bro activities. The women’s time is occupied by caring for their multitude of perfect children while embracing creative arts such as weaving and sculpture, and practical skills such as gardening and raising sheep. Gender hierarchy is in full force, and other than Tansy, the women have all embraced this “tradwife” lifestyle.

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Yet the leader, Max, insists that in Bellinas women are on top of the social structure. “The most important thing a woman can be is a creator of life,” he lectures. “A creator of pleasure for her husband. For her community. That’s when women are most empowered. Empowerment. That’s the name of the game. That’s what we’re all about here. Worshiping women as the goddesses they are. Best way to be a goddess, to be your most powerful self, is to let your husband worship you, too.”

But veneration is easily flipped to become degradation. Objects that can be worshiped can also be toppled. In Bellinas, women are the embodied creatures who provide men with sexual pleasure and emotional comfort, but they lack power to effect change in the patriarchal community. When Tansy objects, Guy dismisses her, insisting that her criticisms will get them cast out and ruin their chances for the perfect and happy life he wants. Jones brings a sharp wryness to the ways that Guy dismisses Tansy’s realistic concerns as nagging. Max insists that Bellinas is a community of “high vibes”; Tansy’s dissatisfaction is all her fault: Her negative thoughts are harming the community. These moments in the narrative show Jones’ skill at depicting the power dynamic in top-down marriages, and how women’s words are seen as direct threats to communities built upon gender hierarchy.

Manifesting evil and subverting social order are age-old accusations against women labeled “witches.” And yet in Bellinas, Tansy discovers that the other wives pursue positivity in a nature-loving coven where they seek to influence their husbands’ decisions. They feel empowered — settling for the language of self-actualization and embracing the seductress’ ability to control men through sex.

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While witchcraft has been romanticized as a means of resistance for those without power, historically it was a deadly accusation, largely against women. It was not an identity to be embraced. To be accused of witchcraft, especially on the European continent, was to be forced into a vicious and dehumanizing system in which torture was used to extract increasingly fantastical tales of powers gained by consorting with demons.

Which is not to say that there were not healers and women who offered solutions to those seeking remedies for everything from infidelity, unrequited love and unwanted pregnancy to physical ailments and disputes with neighbors. In search of signs and wonders as portents for her future, Tansy joins the other wives and hopes that answers will be revealed.

Jones’ writing mirrors Tansy’s increasing anxiety, the author beautifully torquing the tension as her heroine uncovers the community’s secrets. Tansy is not without agency — she knows that she should just leave — but she continues to move toward impending disaster. “In looking back on my first steps, freely taken, into the house on Rose Lane,” she says, “I recall how Iphigenia must have felt walking to the altar in Aulis. The excitement, in spite of what were less-than-ideal circumstances surrounding her. She kept walking even after realizing that she was heading not toward a joyous marriage, but toward her own murder … .”

In telling how a cult comes to substitute group-think for a rational engagement with the world, Jones’ power as a storyteller burns fire-hot. Tansy dithers, even as she smells the smoke created by the friction of her thoughts as they spark against the colony’s monolithic thinking. When the flame finally catches, the fire threatens to consume her.

Although many have sacrificed themselves in attempts to live in utopias, they exist only in fantasies. Similarly, fantastical thinking about women’s control over men lit the pyres of those burned as witches.

Lorraine Berry is a writer and critic in Eugene, Ore.