In the House in the Dark of the Woods

August 6, 2018
Hunt (The Evening Road) packs this eerie tale of wayward women with tinges of witchcraft and nightmarish imagery. A woman known only as Goody drifts into a colonial New England forest after getting lost looking for berries for her domineering husband and young son. Captain Jane, a rugged stranger, finds her and guides her to the secluded house of Eliza, who kindly treats Goody’s exhaustion and wounded feet. Goody flees after waking up in the night and discovering multiple moaning Elizas bent in disturbing poses. Back in the woods, Goody is tricked by the crone Granny Someone into retrieving a lost treasure from a spoiled well. When Captain Jane rescues her, only to take her aboard an airship made of human bones, Goody realizes all three women in the woods are witches. She flies homeward with Captain Jane, who insists on a stop to punish a wicked man from Goody’s past. As she approaches home alone, Goody doubts her decision to leave the woods, and her hesitations push her toward a terrifying choice. The chilling elements build slowly rather than coming as sudden shocks, and Laird’s almost soothing tone makes the surprising twists all the more frightening. This dark fairy tale will make even seasoned horror fans shudder. Agent: Anna Stein, ICM Partners.

August 15, 2018
Odd things befall a woman among witchlike beings in a forest in Colonial America.The woman narrating goes walking in the woods one day to pick berries for her husband and boy and wanders "farther away from our home than ever I had before." (Clues to the undefined time and place include soldiers in red, or Redcoats, and a coastal town where a woman sits in stocks typical of Puritan New England.) After a time, the narrator is in distress, lost in the forest and injured. She will encounter three women who seem to help as they hinder her efforts to return home while they reveal special powers and pastimes. She will dive for a treasure in a filthy well and see the world change when viewed through a hole in a piece of bark. Memories will arise that might explain her own specialness. Things evolve from the strange but plausible to the strange and magical--including a flying boat "made of human skin and of human bones"--somewhat in the manner of Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass. There's an explicit reference to "Hansel and Gretel," one of the grimmer among the Grimm brothers' tales and an apt allusion for Hunt (The Evening Road, 2017, etc.). Borne along by his lyrical writing, the narrative moves from foreboding to fear to the psyche's awful freight and finally to horror. It's a journey in mood and message from Hawthorne's Hester Prynne to the Poe of "The Cask of Amontillado," and the reader yields to the final frisson in the realization of how the why precedes and suits the terrible what. An entire episode--albeit quite creepy--doesn't really fit thematically, and the ending is unfortunately both puzzling and annoying.A bit flawed but an unusual and entertaining tale from an uncommonly resourceful writer.

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Starred review from September 15, 2018
Hunt's (Neverhome?, 2014) latest follows a woman in colonial New England as she takes a strange, wandering journey through a mysterious wood. As the nameless protagonist travels, she encounters other women who seem to dwell in the woods, such as the dashing Captain Jane with her wolf-skin cloak, the cheery yet possibly tormented Eliza, who seems blithely trapped on her little patch of land, and a mysterious girl in yellow who bounds through the trees. Interwoven throughout are the heroine's memories of her stern husband and young son, or of her childhood with her cruel mother and weak father, with each new memory providing more pieces of the nameless woman's past and clues to what drew her into this verdant, haunted landscape in the first place. Hunt's accomplished prose creates the atmosphere of possibility and danger that lurks in the best fairy tales, where anything can happen but everything has a cost. Highly recommended for fans of that amorphous border between fantasy, horror, and literary fiction as found in the work of Kelly Link, in Joy Williams' The Changeling (1978), or in Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber (1979).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

September 15, 2018

Having explored the dark realities of American history, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award winner Hunt (Kind One) goes fantastical in this beautifully delivered example of literary horror, set in colonial New England. A Puritan woman walks into the woods to pick berries for her husband and son and, after falling asleep, awakes to a strange new world she cannot escape. She's helped fleetingly by Captain Jane, who returns later to rescue her after cackling Granny Someone shoves her down a filthy well to rescue a precious object. Meanwhile, the woman spends time with Circe-like Eliza, who enchants her with kindness, well-stocked larder, and spooky games. Eliza has increasingly disturbing visions--looking through a bit of bark, she sees not golden-haired Eliza but a sunken-eyed hag. Yet much as she desires to leave, the real world she recalls--unkind parents and a pious, abusive husband--isn't promising either. If the women she encounters are indeed witches, evoking witchcraft's place in America's past, they're also guides of sorts--or perhaps projections of our innermost memories, desires, and fears. VERDICT Occasionally puzzling in purpose, this atmospheric book still absorbs like the best dark fairy tales and will leave readers chilled to the bone. [See Prepub Alert, 4/9/18.]--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2018

In Colonial New England-set literary horror from the ever-original Hunt (Neverhome), a Puritan woman leaves home and wanders a dark woods, encountering near-human wolves and a well resonant with screams. But is the evil in her? With a 40,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2018

In Colonial New England-set literary horror from the ever-original Hunt (Neverhome), a Puritan woman leaves home and wanders a dark woods, encountering near-human wolves and a well resonant with screams. But is the evil in her? With a 40,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.