The Storycatcher

August 19, 2013
Hite (Ghost on Black Mountain) returns to the North Carolina territory for the story of Shelly Parker, a 16-year-old servant who works for the local pastor and his family. For as long as she can remember, Shelly has been able to see and hear the spirits of the Black Mountain dead. When the ghost of Arleen Brown begins to haunt Faith, Pastor Dobbin's daughter, threatening to reveal past sins the girl turns to Shelly for help. In the face of growing pressure from both the spirits and Faith's father, the girls join forces and make their way through the Depression-era South, from North Carolina to the Georgia coast in search of a man who holds answers for them both. Pastor Brown's organized religion battles the folk beliefs that Shelly channels for the souls of Black Mountain. Through multiple perspectives, Hite delivers a traditional Southern gothic tale infused with the supernatural. With ghosts abounding and a driving mystery, Hite's over-the-top language seems unnecessary, and often too many voices muddle an otherwise spellbinding tale. But those who enjoyed Ghost on Black Mountain will find much to enjoy.

September 15, 2013

"Her spirit will never rest because she's a storycatcher.... That's someone who untangles the wrongs plaguing others. Some people are born that way, some are only burdened after they die." Hite's (Ghost on Black Mountain) Southern gothic takes place during the 1930s on North Carolina's Black Mountain, where Shelly Parker, a teenage servant, communes with the spirits who tell her tales. Shelly works for the Dobbins family, ruled by the cruel Pastor Dobbins who has secrets of his own. Dobbins's beautiful daughter, Faith, lives a charmed life, or so it seems to African American Shelly, who lives under vicious Jim Crow laws and struggles to eke out a living with her single mother, also a maid. The spirits desire to use Faith to bring unsettled issues to light, exposing the secrets of their scandalous deaths. VERDICT Though the novel's premise is intriguing, its narrators are numerous, and it frequently jumps from one point of view to another, resulting in little emotional connection for the reader and at times an unbearably slow pace. For fans of gothic fiction, titles by John Berendt, Joyce Carol Oates, and Margaret Atwood are perhaps better choices.--Julia M. Reffner, Fairport, NY

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2013
Powerful Pastor Dobbins acts nice, but many in his Appalachian parish know differently. His wife and his daughter, Faith, are only two of the women the pastor has abused. Faith loves Will, who is black, and in the Depression-era South that is forbidden; nevertheless, Faith is heartbroken when Will leaves town. Servant Shelley Parker, 16, talks to spirits who reveal the reality behind what people say, and the village women, both alive and ghostly, tell how they help each other through the worst. Set in the mountain community over several generations and told in alternating first-person voices, the drama comes from the various imperiled women who care for each other. The intricate plot with its twists and turns, real and supernatural, delivers suspense, but what holds the reader in the end is the lyrical storytelling ( She was the air in my lungs and the push in my step ).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)