Blood Kin

Winner of the 2014 Bram Stoker Award It's a dark Southern Gothic vision of ghosts, witchcraft, secret powers, snake-handling, Kudzu, Melungeons, and the Great Depression, set in the southern Appalachians of the U.S., alternating between the 1930s and the present day. Blood Kin is told from the dual points of view of Michael Gibson and of his grandmother Sadie. Michael has returned to the quiet Appalachian home of his forebears following a suicide attempt and now takes care of his grandmother—old and sickly but with an important story to tell about growing up poor and Melungeon (a mixed-race group of mysterious origin) while bedeviled by a snake-handling uncle and empathic powers she but barely understands. In a field not far from the Gibson family home lies an iron-bound crate within a small shack buried four feet deep under Kudzu vine. Michael somehow understands that hidden inside that crate is potentially his own death, his grandmother's death, and perhaps the deaths of everyone in the valley if he does not come to understand her story well enough. "Superbly structured and gracefully paced… It's a bloody good book, to be sure." - Reactor "Steve Rasnic Tem is the kind of writer other writers want to be, and Blood Kin is a masterful example of his craft." - This Is Horror