Raconteuse

There is a fascinating passage in Margaret Atwood's Surfacing where four Canadians on their way up a river in the wilderness come upon a heron someone preceding them has killed and strung from a tree. Having surveyed its disgusting remains, the raconteuse asks herself "Why had they strung it up like a lynch victim, why didn't they just throw it away like the trash?"

Tom's mother was a superb raconteuse with the enviable gift of painting a verbal canvas of enchanting colours, transporting her audience into a realm of her own making that invariably enhanced the core of the tale.

So, Shasta had reflected at once, Aunt Lily, by acclamation the family raconteuse, had certainly piqued her concern and puzzlement, if not exactly her surprise.