Format: Hardcover, 320 pages
Release Date: July 12, 2022
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Source: Publisher
Genre: Horror / Fantasy / Contemporary
Melissa Albert meets Laura Ruby in this magnetic Southern Gothic debut inspired by Appalachian folklore.
The sleepy little farm that Laurel Early grew up on has awakened. The woods are shifting, the soil is dead under her hands, and her bone pile just stood up and walked away.
After
dropping out of college, all she wanted was to resume her life as a
tobacco hand and taxidermist and try not to think about the boy she
can’t help but love. Instead, a devil from her past has returned to
court her, as he did her late mother years earlier. Now, Laurel must
unravel her mother’s terrifying legacy and tap into her own innate magic
before her future and the fate of everyone she loves is doomed.
Elizabeth Kilcoyne’s Wake the Bones is a dark, atmospheric debut about the complicated feelings that arise when the place you call home becomes hostile. Wake the Bones is sprinkled with charming Southern magic and chilling Appalachian folklore set in a place called Dry Valley, Kentucky. Laurel’s late mother Anna, who was a pariah in their rural Kentucky town, used her magic to grow healthy crops. The magic Laurel inherited, she believes, is less practical: when she touches a deceased animal’s body, she sees its death.
Her mother died when she was a baby. Her entire family is buried in the cemetery on the property. Her uncle Jay, who believed that Laurel's mother killed herself, never wanted Laurel to leave. Now that she's dropped out of college in Cincinnati, Laurel is expected to return to making her living off growing tobacco as well as being a taxidermist. Laurel has a special relationship with bones. She can tell which animal the bones came from, and even what killed the animal. Called the "Devil's Daughter" thanks to her mother's oddness, Laurel's only true friends are brothers Garrett and Ricky Mobley, as well as Isaac Graves.
Things start getting dark really quickly in this story. First there is the blood found behind the wall that looks as though something laid down and died. Then the bones belonging to Laurel's bone collection are found discarded in a pile. The weirdness continues when Lauren and Isaac are confronted by a monster. Increasingly strange and terrifying events prompt Laurel to consult local outcast Christine, who reluctantly helps Laurel harness her magic. Christine is privy to visions, scents and impressions.
She knows when someone is pregnant, and when broken marriages are in the future. She sees good and bad things in Laurel's future and tries to warn her that it is up to her, to face her mothers Devil before she ends up another victim of the Devil. Laurel finds herself immersed in unraveling the ghastly mystery of her mother's untimely death, untapping the hidden magic within herself in order to protect her loved ones and her own future, as well as an evil that wants Laurel and will go through any lengths, including sacrificing her friends, in order to get what it wants.
It is fair to say that multiple third party narratives are used in this story so pay attention. Laurel and Ricky’s combative romance and Isaac and Garrett’s tentative courtship are likely to be the focus of a certain sect of readers. Some of the thematic material in Wake the Bones involves mental and physical abuse, violence, and suicide. Additionally, the book includes dental trauma, guns, postpartum depression, drug usage, animal death, and blood. Specific content warning for abuse by an alcoholic parent.
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