The Hauntings Back Home

The Hauntings Back Home by Rebecca Cuthbert baited me with its Table of Contents, and Jonathan Gensler set the hook when he asks how the hills of West Virginia produce an abundance of dark fiction writers?  I grew up just south of there, over the border in Virginia, and I now live a little further south than that, near the Storytelling Capital of the World in Tennessee, so I had some theories. Let’s talk.

If you have read any of my reviews (or probably anyone’s) of other collections, I always say something like, it’s a mixed bag, or some were better than others, or I had one or two favorites.

Not so here.

Rebecca Cuthbert’s The Hauntings Back Home is a beautiful, haunting, sweet, sad, funny collection of stories that explore grief, death, and fear.

The collection starts with When You Wander in the Woods, a poem by Beatrice Sheehan, which almost serves as a warning of what we’re about to expose ourselves to - and also that we only have ourselves to blame for how we come out the other side.

These stories are a masterclass in showing that stories with similar themes can be discrete - from the liminal space in the Sabine to the eco-horror in The One that Got Away or even Suffer with the Trees.

There are shades of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca in Mrs. Anderson, Mrs. Anderson, a couple that hint at O. Henry style irony, and some that seem inspired by folklore or urban legends, but all distinctly Rebecca Cuthbert. Even the “lucky” 13th story from Jonathan Gensler, though obviously a different voice, is a perfect complement to this strong collection.

So, I know I said I wouldn’t have favorites, but there are one or two that I can’t stop thinking about, so maybe that’s the same thing. I won’t tell you which they are - you’ll have your own that get under your skin, and we can talk about it then.

Thank you to BookSirens and Undertaker Books for the advance copy for my honest review.