Dark sisters

The residents of Hawthorne Springs, a town somewhere below the Mason-Dixon line where everyone is a member of a megachurch called The Path, have seen unprecedented and ubiquitous prosperity since the late 1700s, except for a strange illness that indiscriminately and seriously sickens the women. Even more troubling, that sickness seems to be tied to those who have reported seeing the "dark sisters," two grotesque female spirits tied together by their braids, living in a large tree on the outskirts of town. The time line alternates in order between Anne in 1750, Camilla in 2007, and finally Mary in 1953, each enhancing the others, keeping readers turning the pages as everything comes together like a jigsaw puzzle, albeit one with a nightmarish final piece. A deadly serious, witchy story propelled by rage against the extraordinary and everyday violence men perpetrate against women, Dark Sisters reaches out across the centuries with a terror that is all too timely. For fans of anything by Rachel Harrison and Gwendolyn Kiste as well as The Year of the Witching (2020), by Alexis Henderson.

This thrilling horror outing from DeMeester (Such a Pretty Smile) blends queer romance and supernatural vengeance across three timelines, all of which revolve around the Dark Sisters, an urban legend haunting the small town of Hawthorne Springs. In the 1750s, Anne, a widow skilled in herbal medicine, is forced to flee into the woods with her daughter, Florence, amid widening accusations of witchcraft. There they discover a mysterious tree that Anne recognizes as possessing "ancient power." In the 1950s, Mary, a deeply frustrated housewife, falls in love with kindred spirit Sharon, but their forbidden affair ends tragically. And in the early 2000s, Camilla, a teenager whose father is the pastor of the powerful, cultlike church that presides over the town with an iron fist, discovers that she is deeply linked to the Dark Sisters. DeMeester's electrifying prose conjures three wonderfully complex female leads, though Camilla's voice feels just a tad less developed than the other two women. After a somewhat slow start, the novel hits its stride at the halfway point, from which it gallops along to a breathtaking conclusion in which the three timelines converge and the heroines face down a generational evil. Grotesque, weird, and entirely unflinching, this tale of female empowerment packs a punch. (Dec.)