Winterset Hollow: A Novel

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These characters truly fascinated me, and I simply adored them. Even though most of them have a few screws loose, I just loved the way they were written. There was a depth to these characters that I wasn't expecting, and it had me hanging off every word of this story.

I watched you salt the top layer, but we’ve just eaten the top layer, so now somebody needs to salt the fries that are on the lower layer. It’s really not that complicated,” Eamon said with a well-intentioned smirk as he gave the newly unearthed goodness a dusting of God’s chosen crystal.

Winterset Hollow was one of those timeless, inimitable books that was simple and pure and patently entertaining on the surface, but so much more underneath. It spoke about life and loss and struggle, fear and bravery and sacrifice in a way that was so approachable it was almost easy to miss, and it immediately wormed its way under Eamon's skin and stayed there like good, strong ink from the day he first opened the cover.”

Caroline, too, was a source of support for Eamon in his constant struggle to adjust to the world beyond his upbringing, albeit for entirely different reasons, and though her outlook wasn’t nearly as plain and positive as Mark’s was, she understood Eamon in a way he didn’t. She knew what it was to feel like an outsider, even in familiar situations. She knew what it was to look at the table and not see a seat, even when the table was her own, and most of the time, all it took was a gentle glance in Eamon’s direction or a friendly hand on his shoulder to remind him that he wasn’t the only one who felt lost and encumbered by his circumstance of birth. To remind him that she also had a history laced with mirrors. But like all good horror tales, the euphoria of our emboldened cast of impressionable youths is short-lived, with things going south rapidly, and rather spectacularly. Mark held his finger aloft in such a singular manner that it stopped him mid-sentence, and he wasted no time in turning his attention to the one who resembled Eamon as if to say, you . . . you may speak. “Yeah, man, we’re just waiting to get over to the isle,” said the redhead as the rest of the motley gathering confirmed as much by nodding and waving their own free passes in the salty September air. “It’s been almost an hour now.” But perhaps most importantly, Durham uses all of this staging to convey insightful and effective commentary on a variety of topics ranging from the temptations and corrupting influence of wealth, power, and longstanding privilege to the legacy of colonization on indigenous populations, and from the problems with unquestioning popular hero worship to the indelible scars left by various forms of abuse and trauma, all the while avoiding coming off as too blatant or preachy. Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, for all its innocence and charm, may at first glance seem like an odd inspiration for so dark and socially conscious a work, but Winterset Hollow does not attempt to deconstruct the English classic so much as use it as a springboard into explorations of the darker chapters of America’s own cultural heritage and history. However, to delve into a more thorough discussion of this novel’s handling of any of these subjects would require extensive spoilers, and so I will leave this to readers to discover in their own time. Steve Stred is the author of a number of novels, novellas and collections. He has appeared in anthologies with some of Horror’s heaviest hitters.They, especially Eamon, wanted to visit Addington Isle to pay homage to author E.B. Addington, creator of the novel... See, he gets it,” jabbed Caroline, taking a freshly seasoned bite and miming her unbridled pleasure for Mark to see. “Perfect.”