Thirteen Days to the Suicide Woods: Day 10 — The City of Children

Several years ago I read a book by Roméo Dallaire about the Rwandan genocide titled,  Shake Hands With the Devil. Dallaire is the former Force Commander of UNAMIR, the peacekeeping force deployed by the U.N. to Rwanda prior to the genocide. He wrote the book about his experience during that atrocity, and how his failure to stop it affected him (it left him with severe PTSD that led to his medical dismissal from the Canadian Forces and almost killed him). It’s a harrowing, heartbreaking book written by a man struggling with guilt and trauma. If you think you know horror because you read Stephen King or H.P. Lovecraft, you need to sit down with Shake Hands With the Devil. See how it shakes you in a way evil cosmic clowns and squidfaced monsters never will.

He followed Devil up with a book about his post-Rwandan humanitarian mission, titled, They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children.

As you can surmise from the title, it’s about the atrocity of using child soldiers to fight in war. And as you can also gather on your own, the truth at the heart of it is, you can take a child and create a vicious killer, because children are malleable, eager to please, and don’t have the same kind of physical or psychological capability to resist indoctrination that adults do. Armed with a machete or an AK-47 and properly indoctrinated, that child is a killer. But, when you shoot that soldier, he is a child again. Because emotionally, he’s always been one. War is one kind of horror. And destroying childhood itself in order to wage it, is another—an atrocity piled on top of tragedy.

It got under my skin like very few books do. Even the title haunted me. I wanted to write something to explore the idea of this duality between killer and child. But I didn’t want to just redo what Dallaire had already done. Not that this isn’t an oft-explored concept in dark fiction. From Children of the Corn, to Village of the Damned, and The Brood, this idea isn’t alien to horror. But the concept of real innocence lingering underneath the monstrosity of killer children doesn’t get enough exploration, in my opinion.

Another title occurred to me as I was contemplating the story taking shape in my head. Who Can Kill a Child?, or rather, ¿Quién puede matar a un niño?

The movie itself is not bad, as a predecessor to Children of the Corn,¹ it has a decent amount of suspense, and comes close to transgression, though by the end, it’s pretty by the numbers.² The setting, however, inspired me again, and I came up with the idea for my titular Ciudad de los Niños, the City of Children.

I moved the setting from Spain to Mexico, and wrapped in my interests in both the narco-occult murders in Matamoros in 1989 and the continuing phenomenon of secuestro exprés.

I wanted to create a very blurred line between atrocity and empowerment. I wanted to explore the idea of child soldiers, but in a way that hinted at the adversarial relationship between adults and children. If it’s adults that destroy childhood by forcing them to be soldiers, what if someone amassed an army of children for the sake of protecting them from adults?

I like moral ambiguity. I like stories with no clear good guy, that make the reader really examine who they’re rooting for and why. I got a rejection for this story from one publisher, the relevant portion of which read: “we never understood why we should care about a dirtbag narrator.” Why indeed? Because the narrator is an unequivocal dirtbag. But he’s a dirtbag who loves his kid. Or thinks he does anyway. It’s up to you, the reader to determine which way love flows in this story, and whether the narrator’s daughter is better off with him or with my stand in for Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte. I’m not holding your hand along this path. I’m just pointing the way.

La Bestia awaits you in Ciudad de los Niños.

The Woods Have Been Waiting

NEXT STOP: Easter Eggs

¹ The movie  ¿Quién puede matar a un niño? came out in 1976, while King didn’t publish his story until ’77 (though he may have written it earlier—I don’t know), and the movie adaptation wasn’t released until 1984.

² It’s based on a novel titled, El juego de los niños (The children’s game), though I haven’t read it.

Thirteen Days to the Suicide Woods: Day 9 — Sympathy for the Devil

I’m sorry. It seems we got going and I skipped a few of the exits. But here we are, and I’d like to talk a little about religion. I know. They say you shouldn’t ever talk about religion, politics, or child rearing among polite company. But this far down the road, we’re starting to get pretty friendly. Aren’t we? So, let me tell you about the Devil.

---

I’ve always been a little in love with stories about the Devil, and as a result I’ve written more than a handful of them. I’ve long wanted to publish a chapbook titled, A Little Red Book of Satanic Stories, though that might not ever happen. Instead, I included a few in THIRTEEN VIEWS OF THE SUICIDE WOODS.

But first, let me explain my history with the Devil.

I was a teenager in the ‘80s during the height of the “the Satanic Panic,” and it shaped a lot of the way I view the character of the Devil. I was a tabletop gamer and a metalhead which put me right in the crosshairs of every religious square¹ who thought I was an emissary of Lucifer himself.  The thing was, I didn’t understand where it all came from. Me and my friends were playing Dungeons & Dragons and listening to heavy metal and punk and it was all benign to us. In the D&D modules we played, we were the good guys, trying to rescue towns and treasure from the forces of evil. It was fantasy, but it we were fantasizing about being heroes, not villains. The music was about having fun and sometimes about trying to make sense of our place in the world. Yes, there was Satanic metal out there, and we enjoyed it, but we could all see it was putting on a role. It was like going to see The Omen. No one really thought that little kid in the movie was the Antichrist. And no one really thought anyone in Venom or Slayer was going out in the woods to sacrifice stray cats and little babies. (Maybe some did, but they also got confused counting to ten with their hands in their pockets.) Not everyone had that same perspective of our pastimes as we did.

A cottage industry sprung up in the ‘80s, producing dozens of books and home videos on VHS giving parents the tools to identify and combat the evil in their own homes that was threatening to destroy the moral fabric of the whole world. Those of us who were constantly getting the game manuals knocked out of our hands in the hallway were left wondering when exactly we’d become so powerful. But the way the crusaders for our souls seemed so naïve and out of touch was still kind of funny. Geraldo Rivera did an hour-long special on the global “Satanic Underground” out to get your kids that, in terms of making him a household joke, hit somewhere in between getting his nose broken in a brawl during his special about neo-Nazis and finding Al Capone’s vault empty. I recorded it and had friends over to watch and laugh at both the absurdity of Geraldo’s credulity and Michael Aquino‘s stupid Mr. Spock haircut.

Still, there were people who were really afraid.

After a while, I loved the social cache of it. It was like that moment in The Wild One where the woman asks Marlon Brando, “Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?” and he replies “Whadda you got?”

Except, in my case, she said, “Hey Bracken, do you worship the Devil,” and I’d say, “No, but I listen to his records.”

I loved seeing people outside of a concert arena carrying signs with scriptures on them and dragging literal crosses around. It was like an extra part of the show. I’d give them a hard time for being weak asses and having wheels at the bottom of their crosses (I imagine those things are heavy, but still), and stick my first and pinky fingers up at them. I’d make the gesture and a kind of ripple went through their numbers, because while it was a joke to us, they seemed utterly convinced that we were a force of evil waging war for their kids’ souls. What we were waging war for was our own culture and freedom from an externally imposed morality. Very devilish indeed.

But, the Panic was not limited to just the comical, absurdist public performance of clowns like Geraldo and people who drag crosses around outside Ozzy Osbourne concerts. Real people got hurt in the moral panic, and by the end of the decade, the Satanic Panic led to the destruction of real people’s lives. As it was coming to a close, it became less funny and much more sinister. Except, it wasn’t the Devil who scared me.

~*~

In my freshman year at college, a classmate of mine asked if I’d be willing to help out with the haunted house her church was putting on and play the Devil in the final room. I thought she asked me because I was a theater major and they wanted someone who could act. It turned out that no one in her church was willing to play the Devil, and she thought that since I was an out atheist, I wouldn’t mind. I didn’t mind. I love Halloween, and I thought it’d be fun to be a part of a haunted house. I put on my best King Diamond style makeup and worked hard to scare the hell out of the people who came through that tent. This was before the phenomenon of Hell Houses as we know them now, and I didn’t realize until late in the permance schedule that I was being used to scare people into being “saved.” I have no idea how many people I helped drive into the arms of Jesus, but I did my best to give them a good Halloween scare. When the church asked me back the next year, I declined.

The story, Mine, Not Yours was inspired in part by my experience helping to put on that Hell House style haunted house. It was too provocative a setting not to use in a story.

~*~
There are two other devilish stories in 13 VIEWS. One is a sympathy for the Devil story about a man seeking a cure for cancer that also dials in my interest in a bit of chicanery I saw James Randi debunk on late night television in the ‘80s: psychic surgery.

The other is a not at all sympathetic shot at theistic Satanists who think they’re going to find some kind of personal reward by embracing selfishness and worshiping a literal supernatural figure. I don’t believe in the Devil or devils any more than I believe in gods, unicorns or orcs.

What all of these stories do is draw a bright line between my sympathies for the literary depictions of the devil as a symbol of personal autonomy and freedom, and my contempt for people who take advantage of others for their own pleasure or profit. I hope you like them.

The Woods Have Been Waiting

NEXT STOP: The City of Children

¹ That is an old person word meaning not “hep” or “with it.” You’re welcome.

Thirteen Days to the Suicide Woods: Day 3 — The Texas Chainsaw Breakfast Club or I Don’t Like Mondays

Several years ago, a friend asked if I’d be interested in writing a story for the new issue of the genre lit magazine he was editing.¹ The issue was meant to be ’80s horror themed, and while I’m not a big fan of ’80s nostalgia, I said yes because it sounded like fun. I was stumped though. When I was a teenager, I enjoyed the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th franchises along with all the others like them. But as an adult, they haven’t aged as well for me as have the movies from my favorite period of film-making, the ’70s. I’m much more into a Shivers, Last House on the Left aesthetic than I am a Chucky or Freddy Krueger kind of guy. When I did finally alight on an idea related the ’80s, it was one I thought hadn’t been deconstructed by a horror scalpel before: The Breakfast Club.

There’s a very sinister undercurrent running beneath the surface of The Breakfast Club which is visually hinted at early in the movie and pays off toward the end.

This bit of graffiti doesn’t seem like much, when shown in the first moments of the film. It appears for only a second or two in a quick cut establishing the scene at the empty high school where the kids are going to be serving their detention. If you’re a fan of the Boomtown Rats, maybe it makes you think of the song. And maybe if you’re a big fan of that band, you know where they got the song title from. When I see this, the quotes around it make it feel like less than a lyric than someone trying to say something thematic, like an epigraph at the beginning of a book.

The line itself was spoken by Brenda Spencer. On January 29th, 1979, Spencer used a rifle her father had given her to kill two adults and wound eight kids at the elementary school across the street from her house in California. When police finally arrested her after a standoff they asked her why she did it; she declared, “I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.”

Take this image at the beginning of the film and couple it with Anthony Michael Hall’s confession why he is in detention, despite being a “parent’s wet dream,” and I think there’s at least one very sinister subtext in the film which is, sometimes school is a place kids don’t survive.

And that’s the thing, there’s a survival horror vibe to TBC. Though they are dancing and trashing the card catalog and getting high, the guidance counselor is a force of doom, stalking them. He’s the threat keeping them captive, and if any of their small rebellions are discovered, he’s promised to end their futures. But he’s not alone as a source of threatening. All the adults either appearing in or spoken of in the film, provide the key to the detention kids’ dread. Expressed in the language of children, the nerd’s parents are going to kill him for getting an F, the jock’s parents are going to kill him if he doesn’t win the wrestling meet, the burn out’s dad might literally kill him one day, and the princess’s parents’ indifference is presently killing her too. Like the guidance counselor, it’s the parents’ very existence that guarantees their children’s doom, because the kids can see what they’ll become if they survive their youth.

And the end is even darker, because, while all the kids have had a personal revelation, none of them have changed their circumstances. In the movie, the basket case literally has to nullify everything unique about herself and pretend to conform to a conventional standard before the jock will recognize her as a person. The princess and the basket case are never going to be best friends, because of the judgmental clique that holds them both emotionally bound. The nerd is pressed into service by them all to satisfy the force of adulthood keeping them captive (and he still has an F), and the burn out, though he got to kiss the princess, still has to go home to the man who puts cigarettes out on his skin and beats him.

It’s a very dark film… with a lot of laughs. So I tried to write my homage that way. Very dark, with some laughs. But to be honest, I think my story ends with much more hope than John Hughes’ does. His kids walk away from their monster, knowing it still has power and that they must return to its lair when the weekend is over.

Is it any wonder they hate Mondays?

The Woods Have Been Waiting

NEXT STOP: Sympathy for the Devil

 

 

¹ His magazine ended up folding and the story didn’t get published until a couple years later when it was rescued in a very wonderful way by Jack Bantry over at Splatterpunk Zine.  If you’re not reading Splatterpunk, you need to be!

Thirteen Days to the Suicide Woods: Day 2 — Endings and Beginnings

I listen to music when I write. I try to match the tempo and rhythm  of an album to what’s taking place on the page. Every once in a while, a single song hits just right and it becomes the soundtrack for an entire story. That’s not too annoying for my spouse when the song is an epic half hour track like Swallow the Sun’s, Plague of Butterflies (which was much of the driving force behind my first novel, Mountain Home). When it’s a three minute song that I have on repeat for two hours while I work on a scene, it can get kind of annoying for anyone living outside of my head. (It’s a good thing that I mostly work while she’s out of the house in the lab.)

Every once in a very long while, a song doesn’t just provide the soundtrack for a scene; it inspires an entire story. And in the case of the final story in 13 Views of the Suicide Woods, the title as well. But first, a little backstory.

Back in 2007, Jwyanza Hobson and Afzaal Deen from the band Crisis, Dan Kaufman from Mindrot, and Nicky Bernardi from Eyes of Fire formed a post-metal/shoegaze group called The Angels Whispered Danger. They premiered the demos of two improvised songs on their MySpace page (remember MySpace?) before the band went their separate ways. They never released any more music as The Angels Whispered Danger, and those two songs were never officially released (though for a short while you could download them from MySpace—which I did). They went into regular rotation on my mp3 player.

 

The Angels Whispered Danger — Khatam

 

Flash forward to the summer of 2011. My first and only child had been born a few months earlier and I was swimming in a sleep deprived cocktail of elation, fear, and hopefulness about his future and ours. One day, while he was napping (the time I had to write), I sat down to work on a story and queued up The Angels Whispered Danger demos. The second song, Khatam, hit me in just the right place at that moment. I remembered reading in an interview with Afzaal Deen that “Khatam” is an Urdu word that means “the end.” And while I was wrestling with the raw emotions of new fatherhood, a story about the intersection of beginnings and endings occurred to me. I put the song on repeat and wrote the first draft in a single naptime. It ended up being the second story I ever sold.

A few years later, I wrote the first story in the collection, Still Day: An Ending, as a companion piece of sorts. It was originally the prologue to a crime novel, but I realized (with the help of a good friend), that it worked better as a stand alone piece. It’s a vignette about the intersection of beginnings and endings, like Khatam, but where that story eventually becomes a frantic piece framed by fire, Still Day ended up being quieter and set in the water. Though I didn’t write Still Day to a song by The Angels Whispered Danger (it was written to Right Where It Belongs by Nine Inch Nails), the two stories are linked in my mind and go together as bookends for the seventeen other stories in between them.

The Woods Have Been Waiting

NEXT STOP: The Texas Chainsaw Breakfast Club 

Thirteen Days to the Suicide Woods: Day 1 — The Call of the Void

I love to get a peek behind the scenes of creative work. I read liner notes on albums, I listen to movie commentaries, and I especially love when they release those “P.S.” editions of novels with questions and interviews with the author at the end of the book. This blog series over the next thirteen days is going to be my attempt at a P.S. appendix of my upcoming short story collection from ChiZine Publications, 13 Views of the Suicide Woods.

Along the way, I’m going to relate a few little details about individual stories in the collection, my motivations and intentions, and background about choices I made, all while trying not to spoil anything for you. For those of you like me, who like to read the liner notes, I hope you enjoy it. 

Since we’re barely on the way, I’ll start with the title. Our first stop on the road is,

why “13 Views of the Suicide Woods”?

Originally, when I sent the proposal for this collection to the editors at ChiZine Publications, I’d had a different title in mind. I hadn’t necessarily wanted to tie the book conceptually to a single story, but I liked the thematic element of one in particular and wanted it to reflect on the collection as a whole. So, I submitted the manuscript as, L’appel du Vide. It’s one of those French sayings that there isn’t really a good translation for in English. Literally, it means “the call of the void” (and I probably should’ve just called it that). It’s that feeling you get in your gut when you stand on the edge of a high place and have the urge to step out, even though under no other circumstances are you looking for a way to end your life. It’s just that feeling. L’appel du Vide. I’ll get into my lifelong relationship with the call of the void later down the road, but suffice it to say now, I had this very bad idea to title a book of short stories by an American author, published by a Canadian press, in English, something French. Fortunately, my editors are smarter than I am.

Sandra Kasturi and Brett Savory, the co-owners/editors of ChiZine were right to reject that title. Brett said to me, “You ought to call it the same thing as the title of that one story.” Although there were 16 stories in the collection I’d pitched, and he hadn’t mentioned one in particular, I knew exactly which title he meant. “Thirteen Views of the Suicide Woods.” When ChiZine accepted the collection, the title changed to 13 Views of the Suicide Woods, likely because it looks better on the cover that way (though the title of the story within is unaltered). I’ve never regretted a second of the change. They were absolutely right, and I think I always wanted to title it that anyway, but my literary pretensions get the better of me sometimes. Everyone needs an editor.

By the way, NO, there are not thirteen stories in the book, or sixteen. There are nineteen. Four of which have never been published before. I hope having more than promised doesn’t disappoint you.

Eventually, I’ll tell you where the individual story title came from and why it means so much to me that’d I’d name a whole book after it. But before we get there, we have a few other stops to make along the way.

The Woods Have Been Waiting

NEXT STOP: Endings and Beginnings.

The Woods Have Been Waiting

Do you have everything you need? Are you ready to go? I’m not sure of the route yet, but I know it’ll take us thirteen days to get there. And then you’ll have all the time to wander that you like. We leave tomorrow.

The woods have been waiting.

 

STRANDED: Bram Stoker Award Nominee

It was such a lovely surprise yesterday to find out that STRANDED has been officially nominated in the Superior Achievement in a Novel category of the HWA’s Bram Stoker Awards. All of the nominees in that category are stellar books by excellent writers, so I am not clearing any shelf space yet, but it sure does make a writer feel nice to be in such company.

13 DAYS TO THE SUICIDE WOODS – Getting Ready

My ChiZine Publications story collection, 13 Views of the Suicide Woods is coming on March 14th (It’d be neat if it was the 13th, but new books come out on Tuesdays!). I want to try something, and I need your help. I am planning on a series of blog posts called 13 Days to the Suicide Woods, starting on March 1 and counting up to the release. During that two weeks I am going to post reflections on a couple of the stories in the collection, and hopefully answer some questions that people have for me here in the comments and over on my Facebook page. So, if there’s something you’d like to ask about a favorite story or inspiration or process generally, or whatever, post it here. I’ll pick the questions that I think will have the most interesting answers and post them on my website leading up to the release of the book.

Want to take a trip to the woods with me? I know the way.

MAELSTROM SHIPPING NOW – Brian Keene

 

Brian Keene writes:

The 2016 Maelstrom set is on sale and shipping now. The three-book set is limited to 225 copies and costs $150. It is (as of this writing) 90% sold out. If you want one, don’t delay.

This year’s set includes:

THRONE OF THE BASTARDS
by Brian Keene and Steven L. Shrewsbury

Rogan is back in this sequel to Brian Keene and Steven L. Shrewsbury’s award-winning KING OF THE BASTARDS, and this time, he’ll show no mercy. Learning that his family are in danger, Rogan returns to his former kingdom, now under siege from foreign invaders led by his bastard son. Now, the aging barbarian and his trusted companions, Javan and Akibeel, must forge an alliance new friends and old foes, mustering an army to retake the kingdom. Surrounded by savages, soldiers, demons, and dark magic, it will take all their cunning, skill, and courage to survive the war and determine once and for all who shall sit upon the THRONE OF THE BASTARDS.

SCHOOL’S OUT
by Brian Keene

Eight-year-old Alan doesn’t like going to school, but when a global pandemic leaves him orphaned, cold, starving, and lonely, he has no choice but to set out on a dangerous quest to return to his third-grade classroom. SCHOOL’S OUT, an all-new post-apocalyptic novella by Brian Keene, was suggested to him by his son, marking their first official collaboration, and is suitable for all ages.

COME TO DUST
by Bracken MacLeod

Ever since her mother abandoned her, five-year-old Sophie has had to depend on her uncle Mitch for everything. But he’s struggling. Restarting a life interrupted by time in prison is hard enough without having to balance work and single parenthood. Mitch is determined to make it work though, striving to keep their family together despite the obstacles in their way, because no matter how difficult things get, they are good for each other. And life for the two of them seems to be looking up. But when Sophie dies tragically, it all comes crashing down. Mitch descends into a crippling grief, coming to understand how little his freedom means without her to share it with. And though released from the sudden responsibility thrust upon him, all he wants is his niece back, safe and alive.

When he gets his wish and scores of children around the world begin to inexplicably rise from the dead—Sophie among them—everything becomes much harder.

Mitch rescues her from the morgue, determined to carve out a normal life for them no matter what, though it soon becomes clear that may not be possible. While the kids who’ve returned behave like living children, they still look very dead. And they can do something else that normal children cannot. Something terrifying. Beliefs differ whether the children’s return is a mercy or a sign of approaching judgment, and a congregation of religious fanatics determined to usher in the apocalypse has their own plan for salvation.

Now Mitch must find a way to save Sophie from an increasingly hostile world that wants to tear them apart and put her back in the ground for good.

***

MAELSTROM VII – CLICK HERE TO ORDER

Source: MAELSTROM SHIPPING NOW – Brian Keene

Golden lads and girls all must…

…as chimney sweepers, come to dust.

Few things have stuck with me as long as the funeral song in Act IV of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. While the play is not a favorite of mine, this verse is a thing of perfect beauty that I love as much as any sonnet or soliloquy he wrote elsewhere. In the scene where it appears, two boys sing the song over the corpse of another boy. Except, the dead boy isn’t a boy. She’s a girl in disguise (Imogen), and she isn’t really dead—only sleeping after her stepmother’s failed attempt to fatally poison her. (400 year old Spoiler: when she wakes up, it’s next to her headless step-brother).

So, of course, when I finished my novel dealing with death and grief,¹ I titled it, COME TO DUST.

There’s a long story about the years long process of writing this novel that I tell in the Afterword to the book. I’ll reprint that here later, when people have had a chance to buy the book. But the very short version is, I’ve never written anything in my life that was as emotionally personal and painful to put down on paper as this, and if it weren’t for Brian Keene (yeah, that Brian Keene), I probably never would have finished it. Again, that’s a story for another day.

Right now, I just want to tease you with a song, a thumbnail of the cover, and some jacket copy. In one week from today, you’ll be able to buy it. But for now, just enjoy some Shakespeare and then go hug someone you love and tell them what they mean to you, because we all, eventually, come to dust.

“Fear no more the heat o’ the sun”
by William Shakespeare
(from Cymbeline)

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Fear no more the frown o’ the great;
Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:
The scepter, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.

Fear no more the lightning flash,
Nor the all-dreaded thunder stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finished joy and moan:
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.

No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have;
And renownèd be thy grave!

And the novel:

COME TO DUST
by Bracken MacLeod
coming soon from Maelstrom and Thunderstorm Press.

Ever since her mother abandoned her, five-year-old Sophie has had to depend on her uncle Mitch for everything. But he’s struggling. Restarting a life interrupted by time in prison is hard enough without having to balance work and single parenthood. Mitch is determined to make it work though, striving to keep their family together despite the obstacles in their way, because no matter how difficult things get, they are good for each other. And life for the two of them seems to be looking up. But when Sophie dies tragically, it all comes crashing down. Mitch descends into a crippling grief, coming to understand how little his freedom means without her to share it with. And though released from the sudden responsibility thrust upon him, all he wants is his niece back, safe and alive.

When he gets his wish and scores of children around the world begin to inexplicably rise from the dead—Sophie among them—everything becomes much harder.

Mitch rescues her from the morgue, determined to carve out a normal life for them no matter what, though it soon becomes clear that may not be possible. While the kids who’ve returned behave like living children, they still look very dead. And they can do something else that normal children cannot. Something terrifying. Beliefs differ whether the children’s return is a mercy or a sign of approaching judgment, and a congregation of religious fanatics determined to usher in the apocalypse has their own plan for salvation.

Now Mitch must find a way to save Sophie from an increasingly hostile world that wants to tear them apart and put her back in the ground for good.

¹ All my novels are about something. In this instance, while the surface story is about death and grieving, the framework is about what we owe to children. I’ll write more about that some other time.