Synopsis:
Buried secrets only spread.
Erin’s brother Bryan has been missing for five years.
It was as if he simply walked into the forests of the Pacific Northwest and vanished. Determined to uncover the truth, Erin heads to the foothills of Mt. Hood where Bryan was last seen alive. He isn’t the first hiker to go missing in this area, and their cases go unsolved.
When she discovers the corpse of a local woman in a creek, Erin unknowingly puts herself in the crosshairs of very powerful forces―from this world and beyond―hell-bent on keeping their secrets buried.
Review:
Wendy N. Wagner’s “Girl in the Creek,” is a story that appreciates both the beauty and danger of the natural world. A murky murder mystery with forensic intrigue and a generous helping of fungal horror (which I must say I am very partial to) Wagner’s latest is packed with bloated bodies and stagnant water, and lots and lots of shrooms. A novel ripe with rot, with an atmosphere that will spread up the arms and plant itself in the brains of readers like mould- “Girl in the Creek,” is a novel that engulfed me entirely during the two days I spent with it. With spores that readers should try not to breathe in, lest they take root somewhere soft or sprout something unwelcome behind your eyeballs, “Girl in the Creek,” hits shelves from Tor Nightfire on July 15th. Thank you to Lane Heymont and the Tobias Literary Agency for my ARC (and mighty cool swag).
We follow Erin Harper, a journalist and nature enthusiast whose brother Bryan, equally passionate about the environment, went missing in Faraday, Oregon. His body never discovered, it’s eventually shrugged off as a suicide, Erin’s parents stop looking, and despite the fact that Erin’s world stalled, everyone else’s kept spinning. Erin arrives in Faraday with photographer and podcaster Hari to write an article for the Oregon Traveler, and when upon arrival she learns that disappearances into the Clackamas National Forest, more than one would expect for a small town, continue, she’s determined to find out exactly what is happening.
The answers she find are hardly fitting for the tourism piece she is expected to churn out, for behind the police tape and forest detritus lies something older, stranger, bigger, than Erin or her friends could ever imagine. Something organic.
A brisk, propulsive read, with atmosphere to spare, “Girl in the Creek,” is dangerously easy to pick up and devour. With pacing that is tight without being rushed, and writing that is eerie but not overwrought, the reader is treated to multiple perspectives, namely that of Erin, but also from a coyote (which is how the novel opens) various other animals, and “The Strangeness,” itself. It’s what I call a box ticker. Small town secrets. Yup. Unexplained disappearances. Oh yeah. The sporror is there. What more could a horror reader want huh? The body horror can only be described as immaculate. A grim, ecological tableau of waterlogged flesh, swelling and blooming and sloughing, symbiotic rot… you get it. I found horror in the slow, earthy undoing, but also real beauty in the Pacific-Northwest backdrop- a duality and confluence in nature that is apparent in every fibre of this novel.
Ronald Malfi’s “Bone White,” is cross-pollinated (indulge me) with Scooby-Doo and Jeff VanderMeer in this moss, mystery and mycelium heavy “cli-fi.” A novel marinated in forest run-off and dripping with verdant menace, Wagner’s writing expertise, knowledge of and affection toward the natural world is not just evident from page one, but the fertile ground from which this thick and unyielding eco horror springs.
Leave a Reply