The Bog Wife

The Haddesley family are keepers of both a cranberry bog in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia and a supernatural pact requiring the ritual sacrifice of their patriarch in order to create a bog wife for the eldest Haddesley heir to carry on the family line. The Haddesley siblings—Eda, Charles, Percy, and Nora—are each as committed to each other as they are secretly resentful. When Wenna, the middle sibling and the only one to have broken free from the family’s obligation to the bog, returns home to complete the ritual sacrifice of their father, the five siblings uncover long-buried family secrets that contradict their very existence and hope for their future. Supernatural, atmospheric, and deeply immersive, the latest from Chronister (Desert Creatures) makes readers feel the damp, hear the rain, smell the moss, and see the flush of fear and blush of shame of the characters. Recalling Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, the physical decline of the Haddesleys’ ancestral home becomes an allegory and monument to the destruction of their family line and their familial drift from one another, but ultimately their unyielding devotion to the land and each other ensure its survival.