Love gothic horror? Don’t love horror but want to read something suitably spooky for Halloween? You have come to the right place! Kay Chronister’s haunting, atmospheric The Bog Wife is most definitely horror but not of the blood-and-guts slasher variety.
Thanks so much to Kelli for suggesting the book to me! I enjoyed it very much!
The Haddesleys live in a crumbling mansion in remote West Virginia on the edge of a cranberry bog. For generations, they have cared for the bog, and the bog has cared for them. A ritual sacrifice seals their covenant with the bog every time the family patriarch dies, and the heir receives a bog wife in exchange. However, when the bog fails to deliver the promised bog wife after the death of their cantankerous father, the surviving Haddesleys–five eccentric feuding siblings–are at a loss for what to do, and The Bog Wife largely centers on their attempts to cope with this new order.
Charlie, the presumed heir, has never felt equal to his inheritance (a sentiment the rest of his family agrees with), and the bog’s refusal reads to him like a personal indictment. The only aspect of being heir that appeals to him is the privilege of going to town for supplies, an excuse he frequently evokes to evade the family’s solitary life and increasingly fractious existence. His more capable younger brother Percy, long bitter over not being the heir, forms his own plan to bring the bog wife into existence.
The prodigal daughter Wenna has returned home, against her will and better judgment, after leaving ten years earlier when their mother mysteriously disappeared. She advocates for abandoning the homestead, an unthinkable suggestion to Nora, the flighty younger sister who frequently retreats into her own inner world and wishes more than anything that her siblings would just get along. Meanwhile, Eda–the oldest sister who runs the house–resents them all and tries to carry on like normal to the best of her abilities, even if normal never really existed for this family.
This is a novel driven by both character and setting. Each of the Haddesley siblings, all of whom have chapters devoted to them as the story unfolds across the seasons, is a complex, wonderfully realized character. Chronister is particularly adept at capturing and depicting complicated family dynamics, and the siblings’ shifting allegiances toward each other and their unique family heritage are compelling and poignant.
This book has a contemporary setting but with such isolated characters that the odd rhythms of their daily life make it quite unique and memorable. They patrol the bog for signs of invasive vegetation, cut peat for fuel for the winter, harvest cranberries for copious amounts of pies and homemade wine. They have no neighbors but have electricity and consume lots of canned SpaghettiOs, cocoa, and cream of mushroom soup, the latter two a frequent catalyst for strident arguments. The backdrop of the cranberry bog–the real-life West Virginia Cranberry Glades, which, in a quirk of geography, resemble Canadian bogs at much farther northern latitudes–is also wonderfully realized and emerges as a character in its own right.
I highly recommend this book for fans of gothic horror and eco-horror, as well as fans of atmospheric, character-driven horror with a strong sense of place.
What’s your favorite horror novel? What have you been reading for Halloween? Tell us in the comments! As always, please follow this link to our online library catalog for more information on this book or to place it on hold.
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