I’ve lived in the South all my life. When I travel the world, I recognize a certain vision and way of life that is unique to the southern United States. The prose that springs from our shared history of societal tragedies, our deeply engrained family sagas, and from the very nature of our land itself—dripping with Spanish moss, humidity, and blood from the sins of our past—is rich, meaningful, and snatches at the soul. My goal in writing Southern Gothic is to transcend race, gender, and political affiliation in favor of eliciting a conviction of the heart toward a better future for all.
I like to start with an easy read to slide into the Southern Gothic genre. While a macabre or grotesque element is required, mysticism—or even magical realism—is notrequired to label a work as a Southern Gothic, though many Southern Gothic pieces hold hauntings front and center.
A Rose for Emilyis a short story, an allegory for the stuck ways of the old South, wherein at the funeral of an elderly, reclusive woman the town recalls her lifetime of idiosyncrasies. And shortly thereafter, they find harrowing evidence of her true nature. The tale is a quick read from the master of Southern Gothic and is all that one needs to spark the desire to descend into the genre.
The short tale A Rose for Emily was first published on April 30, 1930, by American author William Faulkner. This narrative is set in Faulkner's fictional city of Jefferson, Mississippi, in his fictional county of Yoknapatawpha County. It was the first time Faulkner's short tale had been published in a national magazine. Emily Grierson, an eccentric spinster, is the subject of A Rose for Emily. The peculiar circumstances of Emily's existence are described by a nameless narrator, as are her strange interactions with her father and her lover, Yankee road worker Homer Barron.
A favorite guilty pleasure, I read this non-fiction novel on repeat. And egads, please don’t miss the cover photo of The Bird Girl, a chilling statue that inhabits a cemetery. It drips Southern Gothic, as does the name of the book itself: the half-hour before midnight is a time for good magic, the half-hour after is time for malevolence. Have goosebumps yet?
The story is based on the murder of a prostitute for which the protagonist is accused. The allure of the tale includes fascinating, eccentric characters, the beauty of Savannah’s haunting charm, and the mystical underpinnings of hoodoo which waft a veil of mysticism over the story—a story that will possess your consciousness interminably.
Genteel society ladies who compare notes on their husbands' suicides. A hilariously foul-mouthed black drag queen. A voodoo priestess who works her roots in the graveyard at midnight. A morose inventor who owns a bottle of poison powerful enough to kill everyone in town. A prominent antiques dealer who hangs a Nazi flag from his window to disrupt the shooting of a movie. And a redneck gigolo whose conquests describe him as a 'walking streak of sex'.
These are some of the real residents of Savannah, Georgia, a city whose eccentric mores are unerringly observed - and whose dirty linen…
Though this novel is set in Ohio, it is Southern Gothic because of the fact that the protagonist, Sethe, cannot mentally escape from the plantation in the South where she was formerly enslaved. While the character, Beloved, is portrayed as a ghostly being, the true horror of the novel is the fact that Sethe is willing to kill her children to keep them from a life of slavery.
No one writes like Toni Morrison, and in this novel she shows that no one ever really escapes the humiliation, the inhumanity, the terror of slavery. I cannot do justice to explaining all the intertwining themes, but believe me: this is a classic.
'Toni Morrison was a giant of her times and ours... Beloved is a heart-breaking testimony to the ongoing ravages of slavery, and should be read by all' Margaret Atwood, New York Times
Discover this beautiful gift edition of Toni Morrison's prize-winning contemporary classic Beloved
It is the mid-1800s and as slavery looks to be coming to an end, Sethe is haunted by the violent trauma it wrought on her former enslaved life at Sweet Home, Kentucky. Her dead baby daughter, whose tombstone bears the single word, Beloved, returns as a spectre to punish her mother, but also to elicit her…
For a taste of modern-day Southern Gothic, read this.
Set in the Ozarks, 17-year-old protagonist, Ree Dolly, takes up the mantle of caretaker and survival overseer for her family after her father disappears. Epic in its mix of family secrets, general despair, and societal ignorance, Winter’s Bone serves up humanity at its worst: the underbelly of the meth world in the forgotten parts of our country. And yet, the will to survive is strong in Ree.
I can tell you from experience, this backwoods life still exists in places today.
This is a fiercely original tale of love, heartbreak and resilience in the lonely wastes of the American Midwest. The last time Ree saw her father, he didn't bring food or money but promised he'd be back soon with a paper sack of cash and a truckload of delights. Since he left, she's had to look after her mother - sedated and losing her looks - and her two younger brothers. Ree hopes the boys won't turn out like the others in the Ozark mountains - hard and mean before they've learnt to shave. One cold winter's day, Ree discovers…
Finally, a recently-written novel that checks all the boxes for Southern Gothic.
Beautiful prose, memorable and believable characters, excellent plot line, fascinating ending—what more could a reader ask for? The Southern Gothic elements of course: spirituality, mystery, racial tensions, eccentric/mad characters, death, and decay. The South's heat and humidity almost drip from the page. And there are ghosts!
“Some things in this world are meant to burn,” is the tagline for this book, and trust me, this read is on fire.
WHEN AN ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD, WHISKY DRINKING, PIANO PRODIGY ENCOUNTERS A WEALTHY FAMILY POSSESSING SUPERNATURAL BEAUTY, HER ENSUING OBSESSION UNLEASHES FAMILY SECRETS AND A CATACLYSMIC PLAGUE OF CICADAS. The summer of 1956, a brood of cicadas descends upon Providence, Georgia, a natural event with supernatural repercussions, unhinging the life of Analeise Newell, an eleven-year-old piano prodigy. Amidst this emergence, dark obsessions are stirred, uncanny gifts provoked, and secrets unearthed. During a visit to Mistletoe, a plantation owned by the wealthy Mayfield family, Analeise encounters Cordelia Mayfield and her daughter Marlissa, both of whom possess an otherworldly beauty, a lineal trait regarded as…
In 1917, herbalist Madeline Fairbanks is devoted to the people of a dying town in the Southern Appalachians. Renetta Morgan—with whom it is taboo to fraternize because of race—is her apprentice.
On a cold September wind, charismatic Carl Howard blows into town astraddle a stallion of near-mythic proportions. With no reason to doubt him, the town accepts him as their new pastor. But Carl casts a wider net, claiming power, leadership, and much more than he has a right to. Maddie does not bend the knee to Carl, but continues in her progressive ways—and in doing so, finds herself accused of witchcraft and targeted by the KKK.
Too often, I find that novelists force the endings of their books in ways that aren’t true to their characters, the stories, or their settings. Often, they do so to provide the Hollywood ending that many readers crave. That always leaves me cold. I love novels whose characters are complex, human, and believable and interact with their setting and the story in ways that do not stretch credulity. This is how I try to approach my own writing and was foremost in my mind as I set out to write my own book.
The Oracle of Spring Garden Road explores the life and singular worldview of “Crazy Eddie,” a brilliant, highly-educated homeless man who panhandles in front of a downtown bank in a coastal town.
Eddie is a local enigma. Who is he? Where did he come from? What brought him to a life on the streets? A dizzying ride between past and present, the novel unravels these mysteries, just as Eddie has decided to return to society after two decades on the streets, with the help of Jane, a woman whose intelligence and integrity rival his own. Will he succeed, or is…
“Crazy Eddie” is a homeless man who inhabits two squares of pavement in front of a bank in downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia. In this makeshift office, he panhandles and dispenses his peerless wisdom. Well-educated, fiercely intelligent with a passionate interest in philosophy and a profound love of nature, Eddie is an enigma for the locals. Who is he? Where did he come from? What brought him to a life on the streets? Though rumors abound, none capture the unique worldview and singular character that led him to withdraw from the perfidy and corruption of human beings. Just as Eddie has…
