Author: Steve Rasnic Tem
Steve Rasnic Tem’s Blood Kin is pure Southern Gothic with a sharp left turn into horror. The influences streaming through this hybrid include William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Carson McCullers, Cormac McCarthy, Fred Chappell, Manley Wade Wellman, and the mountains and hollows of the author’s southern Appalachian childhood. Alternating between the 1930s and the present day, this dark vision of ghosts, witchcraft, secret powers, snake-handling, kudzu, Melungeons, and the Great Depression is told from the dual points of view of Michael Gibson and his grandmother Sadie. Michael has retreated from the world to the quiet Appalachian home of his mysterious mixed race forebears to take care of his grandmother—old and sickly but with an important story to tell about growing up poor while bedeviled by a snake-handling uncle and empathic powers she but barely understands. In a field not far from the family home lies an iron-bound crate buried under kudzu vine. Michael understands that hidden inside that crate is something which will cause the deaths of everyone he knows if he does not understand her story well enough. Out from Solaris Books, Feb-March 2014.
“Blood Kin is proof Steve Rasnic Tem is a master of Appalachian storytelling. Best book I have read all year.”
— Bram Stoker Award-winning editor of Writers Workshop of Horror and author of Return of the Mothman, Michael Knost.
Publisher: Solaris Books
Publication Date: February 2, 2014