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FictionLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction

The Modern Fairies

Review by Lauren Bufferd

“Cinderella,” “Puss in Boots” and “Rumpelstiltskin” are to this day some of the first stories we hear as children—and as we learn from Clare Pollard’s witty, sexy, historical novel, The Modern Fairies, they were all the rage in the court of Louis XIV.

The Modern Fairies is loosely based on a group of real-life salonaires who met at the home of Madame Marie d’Aulnoy, a woman with a troubled past that included imprisonment and a childhood marriage to a cruel aristocrat. D’Aulnoy and her friends were the original collectors and disseminators of well-known folk tales a century before the Brothers Grimm. Just like the princesses in their stories, they inhabited a world of wicked mothers, murderous husbands, locked towers and poisoned fruit.

The women are joined by Charles Perrault, a wealthy widower and advisor to the king, who went on to great fame as one of the first authors to publish a collection of fairy tales. Over the course of a cold winter, certain details of these contes de fées prove a little too close to the realities of court. There is a spy at d’Aulnoy’s gatherings, and meetings become more dangerous as love letters are misdirected, husbands discover cheating wives, and both the local clergy and the king’s chief of police are put on high alert for any whiff of scandal.

The Modern Fairies is arranged as a series of stories within stories, each fairy tale as light as a bonbon yet cleverly revealing aspects of the teller’s situation, whether a violent husband, younger lover or jealous rival. An all-knowing narrator, perhaps Pollard herself, pops up to offer commentary on the societal restrictions experienced by these noblewomen and to reflect on the subversive ties between tales told and lives lived. An award-winning poet and translator, Pollard has great fun with these stories and with the gossip, the flirtations and the sheer amount of sex at the court of Versailles. She demonstrates, too, how important these women were for documenting, embellishing and preserving a wealth of stories, and like them, plays her part in translating an oral tradition into a written one that we can continue to delight in.

An award-winning poet and translator, Clare Pollard has great fun with these cleverly revealing fairy tales told amid gossip, flirtations and sex at the court of Versailles.
NonfictionTrue CrimeHistory

The Incorruptibles

Review by Priscilla Kipp

New York City’s East Side at the turn of the 20th century comes vibrantly alive in The Incorruptibles: A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld. In the late 1800s, Eastern European Jews began fleeing Germany’s pogroms and Russia’s Pale of Settlement, the largest ghetto in history. The East Side became their American ghetto, soon in the grip of an underworld of gamblers, grifters and pimps, and an upper world of titans of manufacturing and politics. Then along came Abe Shoenfeld and his vice squad, the Incorruptibles.

Dan Slater (Love in the Time of Algorithms) stumbled upon Shoenfield’s “reams of reportage and intelligence about the Jewish underworld of pre-World-War-I New York.” Combined with reporting from newspapers of the day, as well court cases, sales receipts, government findings and memoirs of those involved, Slater provides rich context for the setting the Incorruptibles hoped to reform. In a city plagued by abominable labor conditions in factories, the political machine of Tammany Hall and corruption blocking the path to justice, Shoenfeld’s homegrown vice squad was determined, against all odds, to be incorruptible.

Slater recreates the notorious stars of this underworld—the likes of dapper Arnold Rothstein, ruthless Big Jack Zelig and comically clueless gangster Louie Rosenberg—and the women in their shadows, some of whom, like Louie’s widow, Lily Rosenberg, kept their own notes. He also weaves in the critical impact of fomenting antisemitism throughout the country. The vices plaguing the East Side were being attributed to Jewish immigrants at large, rather than the small cabal of wealthy schemers and corrupt politicians. Slater shows how this metastasizing hatred of Jews foreshadowed Nazi Germany.

While the need for reform was an easy message to sell to the public, actually prohibiting popular illegal activities like gambling and prostitution proved hard. Working with a scrupulous lawyer named Harry Newburger and detective Joseph Faurot, whose technical acumen, like bridging telephone wires to listen in to private conversations, revolutionized criminal investigations, the Incorruptibles prompted The World to print on the front page: “BIGGEST GAMBLERS QUIT; BROADWAY SECTION CLEAN.”

If this was the sole substance of Slater’s book, it would be a singularly worthy read. Yet it is so much more. The Incorruptibles is a compelling crime story, colorful history and an ominous warning about antisemitism.

Dan Slater’s vibrant The Incorruptibles chronicles the homegrown vice squad that took down New York City’s most notorious turn-of-the-century gangsters.
Mystery & SuspenseMystery

The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia

Review by Alice Cary

“Too bad I never went to detective school,” Francesca Loftfield muses near the end of The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia. On a mission for an international aid group, the 27-year-old arrives in the titular Italian town in 1960, charged with starting a nursery school in the isolated mountain village. Life here couldn’t be more different than her native Philadelphia: There’s abundant poverty, minimal electricity and no roads, doctor or police force. The big surprise, however, is a skeleton that’s just turned up; it’s been buried under the post office for years but resurfaced during a flood. Several women beg Francesca to investigate, each sure the bones belong to a missing relative. Francesca’s volatile, opinionated landlord, Cicca, claims that “Fate has brought us together,” and before long, they are calling themselves Watson and Holmes as they investigate the mystery.

Fans of Juliet Grames’ debut, The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna, will welcome more of the author’s immersive descriptions of Calabrian culture and scenery. Francesca is charged with interviewing families to determine who should be enrolled in the nursery school, which gives her the perfect excuse to snoop around. A likable, intelligent narrator, she begins to piece together many of the village’s secrets, while observing its economy, customs, victimization of women, patriarchal and religious domination, politics, emigration and more. The author has called herself “a lifelong student of the Italian-American immigrant experience,” and her expertise, eye for detail and verisimilitude shine on every page. There are lovely moments of human connection, humor and a romance with a handsome man named Ugo, who even Francesca declares to be “a cliché of a romantic hero.” Grames makes excellent use of the area’s dramatic landscape: As the suspense heats up, Francesca finds herself in increasingly dangerous situations.

Just like a big Italian family, the novel contains a multitude of characters and plot threads, many of which require careful attention, causing confusion for Francesca and perhaps readers as well. There’s a big, abrupt twist at the very end, which makes one wonder if a sequel might be in store. With The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia, Grames has created a village teeming with life, and, as it turns out, danger and death.

Juliet Grames’ expertise in Calabrian culture and eye for detail shine on every page of The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia, a historical mystery set in 1960 Italy.
NonfictionBiography

The Genius of Judy

Review by Kelly Blewett

More than a fan letter to Judy Blume or a hit-by-hit summary of her career, The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us defends a critically engaged thesis: Blume meant so much to so many because she took the ideas of second-wave feminism and recast them as compulsively readable narratives. Blume was, biographer Rachelle Bergstein writes, “the Second Wave’s secret weapon.”

By writing about everything from menstruation (Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret) to masturbation (Deenie) to teens who have sex without regret (Forever), Blume took growing up seriously, and took the girls’ pleasure seriously, too. She came of age as a writer and woman during the height of the Second Wave and the sexual revolution. Bergstein traces the interlocking of the women’s movement with Blume’s oeuvre, putting her books in conversation with seminal feminist texts like Our Bodies, Ourselves and The Feminine Mystique. Blume’s biography fits right in: Bored and frustrated by her duties as a housewife and mother, writing gave Blume “the zap of something familiar from her girlhood: something electric and joyful. A distant, yet sacred, creative force welled up inside her.”

As a result of Bergstein’s biography, any fan of Judy Blume will gain fresh context on how her body of work amplified and reflected feminist thinking at the time. For instance, thinking about Wifey as Blume’s version of Erica Jong’s feminist classic The Fear of Flying prompted me to reread Wifey—and to enjoy it more. Bergstein excels at this kind of analysis. Her chatty, entertaining summaries of Blume’s books provide important context without getting lost in the weeds.

Blume gathers her laurels today not only for writing honestly about women’s and girls’ experiences, but also for her resistance to book banning. (According to Bergstein, Blume was the most banned author in the 1980s; her books have been fingered in the most recent bans as well.) Those concerned by the current wave of book banning will find Blume’s advocacy for authors and libraries both heartening and instructive. While readers might wish that Blume had participated in The Genius of Judy directly by offering an interview or access to private archives, Bergstein’s groundbreaking book is analytical, smart and accessible, ultimately demonstrating how Blume’s work has contributed to ongoing cultural shifts across multiple generations of women.

 

More than just a fan letter to Judy Blume, The Genius of Judy shows how the groundbreaking author’s work has impacted multiple generations of women.
NonfictionTrue Crime

The Devil Behind the Badge

Review by Alice Cary

District Attorney Isidro R. Alaniz believes that when taking a case to a jury, “The most effective structure for any argument will always be a story.” The 49th Judicial District of Texas, which he serves, is home to Laredo, where Alaniz led the prosecution of Juan David Ortiz, a married father of three and a 10-year member of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency who in September 2018 murdered four sex workers. In The Devil Behind the Badge: The Horrifying Twelve Days of the Border Patrol Serial Killer, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rick Jervis delivers the tragic, headline-grabbing story with staccato precision and emotional depth. 

Jervis takes readers right into the heart of the San Bernardo Avenue district of sex workers, drug dealers and people with substance abuse disorders who live within a stone’s throw of the U.S.-Mexico border. Ortiz’s victims—Melissa Ramirez, Claudine Anne Luera, Guiselda Alicia Cantu and Janelle Ortiz—are painted vividly, thanks to Jervis’ many interviews with their families and friends. He carefully sets the stage for how each of these women’s lives intersected with one other and with Ortiz, who grew up as a Bible-toting Pentecostal Christian, served as a Navy medical corpsman in Iraq and eventually became a supervisor at the Border Patrol. Ortiz  refused Jervis’ interview requests and has given scant clues to what may have sparked his spree, but the author notes that the agency “tolerated an environment of misogyny and impunity within its ranks during Ortiz’s tenure there.”

One victim’s sister addressed Ortiz in the courtroom, saying, “You gave your word to protect the border, yet you failed. You betrayed your badge.” Jervis excels at conveying the frenzy of Ortiz’s crimes and his dramatic capture. The Devil Behind the Badge is an unsettling account of a serial killer leading a double life: one masquerading as an upright citizen, and the other mercilessly preying on society’s most vulnerable.

 

The Devil Behind the Badge is an unsettling true crime account of a U.S. Border Patrol officer who mercilessly preyed on society’s most vulnerable.
Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

The Dissonance

Review by Matthew Jackson

Shaun Hamill’s fiction jolts the reader with an immediate sense of ambition, a sense that they are about to be not just immersed, but plunged into something enormous that nevertheless keeps a grip on its humanity. With his follow-up to A Cosmology of Monsters, The Dissonance, Hamill once again retains that massive scope while telling a deeply felt story of loss, love and a chance at redemption, solidifying his place as one of genre fiction’s brightest rising stars.

In their teenage years, Hal, Erin and Athena were introduced to an obscure and powerful magical system known as the Dissonance. They spent their high school summers being tutored by a local professor in their hometown of Clegg, Texas, learning the right way to wield the uncommon and often frightening power that stemmed from their own negative emotions. Then tragedy struck, leaving the trio missing a friend and separated by time, grief and a disconnection from the magic they once shared.

Two decades later, Hal, Erin and Athena reunite in Clegg as the 20-year memorial for the event that rent them apart looms and strange happenings rock the landscape around them. Together with a local teen named Owen, who is caught up in a supernatural mystery of his own, the trio hurtle toward something dark, something that could spell the end of everything or be the beginning of their path back from the brink.

Hamill’s story is packed with fantasy and horror delights, from dark rituals in cemeteries to monsters in the forest to powerful swords that were once thought to be merely mythical. The sense that these characters are caught in the midst of something much bigger than themselves, are being buffeted on all sides by something titanic, is immediate, thrilling and seductive. But even as supernatural weather and the realities of living in a magical world are ever present, the characters always come first. Hal, Athena and Erin emerge as fully formed people carrying heavy burdens that are simultaneously fantastical and relatable, their emotions nearly tangible thanks to Hamill’s direct and page-turning prose.

The Dissonance will hook you with its phantasmagoria of dark imagery, but it will keep you reading because it’s a story about how the shared traumas of our youths can both shape us and save us. It’s fantasy, horror, a coming-of-age journey and so much more.

A phantasmagoria of dark imagery that never loses sight of its human core, The Dissonance solidifies Shaun Hamill’s place as one of genre fiction's brightest rising stars.
NonfictionHistoryCultural History

The Bookshop

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

“If bookstores were animals, they’d be on the list of endangered species,” notes author and historian Evan Friss in The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore. While endangered, bookstores are also, as Friss convincingly argues, resilient, powerful places with the capacity to anchor communities, shape lives and bring people together.

Friss sets the stage for his entertaining romp through history with an introductory portrait of Three Lives & Company, a cozy independent bookshop in Manhattan’s West Village with 6,000 books crammed into hand-carved shelves, and colorful booksellers who have worked there for decades and “keep track of inventory by hand, jotting down titles sold on yellow notepads.” Friss was more than a loyal customer there. When he married bookseller Amanda, the shop closed for the occasion.

Friss doesn’t neglect facts and figures, which can be depressing for those of us who could never quite enjoy You’ve Got Mail. We learn, for example, that the U.S. Census Bureau reported 13,499 bookstores in 1993; by 2021, the figure had dropped to 5,591. However, more than anything, Friss is a storyteller. Each chapter introduces us to fascinating, dedicated booksellers, including the multitalented Benjamin Franklin, who had a bookshop before bookselling businesses were widespread in the colonies. Friss tells us, “He was a shopkeeper who sold books (retail and wholesale), a printer (and sometimes binder), an editor (and sometimes author), a marketer, a publisher, and a postmaster—roles that blurred.”

Friss goes on to browse through the history of American bookstores in chapters that cover Chicago’s Marshall Field’s, the country’s “first book superstore,” as well as the last bastion on New York City’s erstwhile Book Row, the Strand. Having started with Franklin, it’s fitting that Friss’ final chapter focuses on another writer-bookseller: Ann Patchett. Patchett was already a successful author when she co-founded Nashville’s Parnassus Books with Karen Hayes in 2011. Friss tells us that Parnassus, along with other indies such as Word Up in New York City’s  Washington Heights neighborhood known as “Little Dominican Republic,” and Solid State Books, a Black-owned bookstore in Washington, D.C., have built loyal followings that have (mostly) enabled them to weather the COVID-19 pandemic—and Amazon.

Will the unique animal of the independent bookshop survive? In many ways, Friss suggests, that’s up to readers and book lovers—to us.

 

The Bookshop is an entertaining romp through the history of America’s bookstores, paying tribute to dusty stacks, colorful booksellers and the dedicated patrons who have helped shops endure.
NonfictionSports

The Boys of Riverside

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

In the fall of 2021, Thomas Fuller, a breaking news reporter for the New York Times, learned about a high school football team steamrolling their opponents on the way to a league championship. The team? The California School for the Deaf, Riverside. In his stirring The Boys of Riverside: A Deaf Football Team and a Quest for Glory, Fuller movingly recounts the Riverside Cubs’ rousing tale of courage, hope and triumph on and off the football field.

Many of the Cubs had tried to play for hearing teams, but they faced frustration and ridicule; joining the Cubs, an all-deaf team with an all-deaf coaching staff, gave them a sense of brotherhood, belonging and mission. Fuller profiles Dominic Turner, who always felt alienated playing for hearing schools; with the Cubs, he became the standout defensive player he had yearned to be. Phillip Castaneda was living in a car in the Target parking lot across from the Cubs’ field when he found his way into practice and soon excelled as a lightning-fast running back. Head coach Keith Adams, himself a deaf former athlete, emphasized stamina, endurance and teamwork to his players. Adams’ sons, Trevin and Kaden, played on the Cubs, Trevin leading the team as quarterback because of his passion and talent for the game. “I came to see the Cubs as a flesh-and-blood realization of the American dream,” Fuller writes.

Their opponents from hearing schools would often talk about how embarrassed they’d be to lose to a deaf team. But lose they did. Being deaf gave the Cubs an edge: The noise of the crowd didn’t distract them, and they could communicate effortlessly using sign language, which often confused opposing players. Fuller follows the Cubs through a full season and change, providing game-by-game synopses that never read as dry or sterile. His knack for vivid, fast-paced storytelling animates The Boys of Riverside and puts readers at every game. He illustrates the Cubs’ triumphs to prove to the world that deafness is “no impediment to sporting glory.”

 

The inspired and moving The Boys of Riverside chronicles an unstoppable all-deaf high school football team.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

The Bedtime Boat

Review by Jill Lorenzini

There’s no shortage of bedtime books, but authors and illustrators continue to surprise with their creativity and artwork. The Bedtime Boat may be joining a very full shelf, but its clever and useful take on night terrors is worthy of attention.

Little Chandan has a hard time sleeping—not because he doesn’t want to, but because it leads to his imagination running off, taking him on a journey that starts out fun, but quickly turns into a nightmare. Chandan’s mom, however, has a clever trick: She has Chandan concentrate on a toy boat, which helps him focus his breathing, calming him down and helping him drift off. Sital Gorasia Chapman maintains a steady pulse of rhyming, alliteration and repetition, which makes for good bedtime reading even amid Chandan’s terrors. When Chandan’s mother gently interrupts scary thoughts with her reminder to breathe, speaking in a cadence that feels like the waves she invokes, Chandan—and the reader—can’t help but be soothed.

The Bedtime Boat begins with a literal circus of colors, and one can almost hear the cacophony of rides and voices against cheerful carnival music, evoking what the inside of an active child’s mind might look like after a busy day. As Chandan and his mother head home, the circus gives way to the soft blues of a nighttime routine and, finally, bed. But sleep is interrupted by images from Chandan’s day, and his imagination takes over, pulling him into somewhat frightening dreams of whales and pirates, sharks and treasure. The bedtime boat itself links the real world and Chandan’s dream stories, bringing Chandan safely through these nightmares and back to his bed, where he sets an anchor. Anastasia Suvorova’s art is soft and hazy like a dream, but also intricate, and reality and dream weave together in a manner that reflects those final stages of dozing off. The Bedtime Boat is fanciful, artistic and beautiful—almost too visually appealing to send little ones off to sleep.

The book also gives practical advice—a rarity in this reviewer’s experience—providing back matter with instructions for creating your own paper bedtime boat  to help little ones feel a sense of control. For children who struggle with bedtime, and especially those who experience night terrors, The Bedtime Boat can help put feelings into words.

 

The Bedtime Boat is fanciful and beautiful, with art that is almost too visually appealing to send little ones off to sleep.
NonfictionWomen's HistoryHistoryAmerican History

The Bluestockings

Review by Roger Bishop

In 18th-century England, women and men had no setting where it was acceptable to converse as equals on intellectual subjects like literature, fine art, foreign affairs, history, philosophy and science. That is, until women began hosting lively gatherings that defied sexist gender norms.

When Elizabeth Montagu began hosting her salons in her house in London, she started a trend that historian Susannah Gibson calls “the centerpiece of the first women’s liberation movement.” Gibson’s meticulously researched and beautifully written The Bluestockings: A History of the First Women’s Movement tells how this groundbreaking development changed the lives of women who achieved prestige as novelists, poets, translators and advocates of education.

Gibson spotlights salon hosts Elizabeth Montagu and Hester Thrale alongside prominent intellectual figures of the period: novelists Frances Burney and Sarah Scott, poets Ann Yearsley and Hannah More, author and advocate Mary Wollstonecraft and historian Catharine Macaulay. “Whatever magic Montagu weaved within the walls of her salon,” writes Gibson, “the old spell was broken and the learned lady—so despised elsewhere—suddenly became a desirable person to know . . . even an aspirational figure.” Macaulay is of particular interest because her experience is emblematic of the existent societal tension. Her multivolume history of England was widely praised, yet she dealt with “an enormous amount of male prejudice.”

The term “bluestocking” “caught on as a way of valuing intellectual endeavors above fashion.”  While Gibson acknowledges the diversity of opinions among the Bluestockings, she writes that, on the whole, they “were advocating for the most fundamental woman’s right: the right to be acknowledged as an independent individual of inherent worth.” Laying the groundwork of a whole new worldview, the movement influenced the suffragists of the next century. Consistently enlightening and insightful, The Bluestockings should be widely read by both women and men.

Meticulously researched and beautifully written, The Bluestockings recounts the lives of 18th-century women who forged a path for feminist movements to come.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

That Always Happens Sometimes

Review by Alice Cary

Get ready to fall in love with Max, the irrepressible elementary school narrator of That Always Happens Sometimes. He’s full of energy and enthusiasm that constantly erupts like a volcano.

In Kiley Frank’s clever text, Max poses a series of questions that reveal his personality, such as “Have your electric pencil sharpener privileges ever been revoked because of an unfortunate incident with a crayon?”  On each spread, K-Fai Steele’s illustrations beautifully capture Max’s gusto and the path of debris—not to mention consequences—that follow. His parents and teachers try to rein him in with multiple checklists (items include “keep hands to myself”) and interventions (tennis balls on the legs of his chair to squelch his noisy movements).

Both Frank and Steele excel at conveying much with small, powerful flourishes. For instance, in the chaotic aftermath of Max’s parents trying to get him to school on time, Frank writes, “The car ride to school was very quiet,” while a full-page spread uses just a few strokes to show Max in the back seat clutching his backpack and his father gripping the steering wheel, fury flashing in his eyes and tight-lipped mouth.

Frank uses Max’s questions to reveal life at home and at school, and poses variations on his answers to move the story along in creative ways. Max repeatedly notes, “That always happens sometimes,” or “I always feel that way.”  One day, however, he says, “This has never happened before,” as he participates in an intriguing team-building exercise that produces surprising and affirming results for all.

Young and old readers alike will recognize themselves or someone they know in Max. That Always Happens Sometimes is a delightful book guaranteed to bring on both laughs and greater understanding of the many Maxs in the world.

That Always Happens Sometimes is a delightful book guaranteed to bring on both laughs and greater understanding of the many Maxs in the world.
NonfictionLifestylesDesign

The Art of Gothic Living

Review by Laura Hutson Hunter

In his introduction to The Art of Gothic Living: Dark Decor for the Modern Macabre, author Paul Gambino says that “Modern Gothic decor is the physical manifestation of the Goth ideology.” Just what that ideology is, however, is undoubtedly up for debate. That’s what makes Gambino’s selection of 15 different homes from three continents so intriguing: There’s extraordinary variety even in such a niche subculture. A former church in western Ohio features arched stained-glass windows and doors that open up to a cemetery directly across the road. A Tudor manor house from 1559 in Somerset, England, has a cabinet full of wax moulage heads that were previously on display in medical museums and illustrate various diseases and abnormalities. There’s even a 1,000-year-old castle in Rome that was the summer residence of two popes, Leo XII and Paul V. But this book is as much about the collections inside the homes as the homes themselves. One has shelves of antiquarian books about the occult and natural history, while another has an almost encyclopedic archive of spiritualist ephemera. Readers will also meet the curators and inhabitants of these homes. Adam and Laura, a pair of stage actors whose passion for Victorian decor was inspired by both opera and ’90s goth music, live in a third-floor walk-up apartment in New Jersey. They count among their treasures a shrunken human head from the 1930s, a sloth bear rug and a “mated pair” of taxidermied passenger pigeons. “We feel very comfortable surrounded by this decor,” Adam says. And readers will be delighted to explore such surroundings.

 

The devil is in the details in Paul Gambino’s survey of modern gothic decor, The Art of Gothic Living.
FictionLiterary FictionGothic FictionDebut Fiction

Smothermoss

Review by Freya Sachs

Alisa Alering’s debut, Smothermoss, is a novel of violence, trust and the landscape of Appalachia. The mountains and hollows, the moss, quartz, water and trees are all painted in their full aliveness.

In the 1980s, Sheila, Angie and their mother are trying to figure out how to survive. Working long shifts at the asylum, their mother is rarely present, and while the two sisters share a small room, their diverging curiosities, interests and ways of being make it hard for them to relate to and understand each other. Sheila goes to work, she worries, she feeds the rabbits. Angie explores, she knows the neighbors, and she draws mysterious creatures on her own deck of tarot cards which almost seem to self-animate.

The community shifts when two female hikers are murdered on the Appalachian Trail, and  worry arises that the murderer has yet to leave the area. The secrets of what happened hide in the landscape. As the novel progresses, the land takes over—the mountains crack and communicate, and the rocks and stones have stories to tell.

In many ways, Smothermoss resembles a Southern gothic fairy tale, with elements—like the invisible rope attached to Sheila’s neck—that require a certain suspension of disbelief, and the setting of the 1980s South, a challenging place to find one’s voice. Ultimately, the story carries you away, with brief chapters, crisp scenes and high stakes. Each scene builds in tension and a sense of wonder, surprising you with the direction these sisters’ future may take.

Alisa Alering paints the mountains, hollows, moss and quartz of the Appalachian landscape in all their full aliveness in Smothermoss, their gothic debut.

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