It's 1948, and the best moonshiner in the Smoky Mountains is Stella Wallace. Though she was born in Chicago, she came to live with her stern grandmother on the family farm, living a rough and fairly simple life before learning the moonshine business from her grandma Motty's handyman. But there's more to Stella's story than that. She comes from a long line of women who have been chosen to commune with the God of the Mountain, a mysterious creature upon which Stella's family has created their own religion. Now, however, Motty has died and yet another daughter of the clan has been chosen to commune with the God, and while she's broken away from the family for the most part, Stella is determined to stop young Sunny from experiencing the same horrors she did as a child.
Told in alternating chapters between Stella's childhood and adult life, this is a slow burn horror novel that pairs the fear of the supernatural with the all-too-real horror of men manipulating women (girls, really) in the name of power and religion. This is the first horror novel I've read by Gregory — I've previously enjoyed his fantasy-tinged dysfunctional family novel Spoonbenders and the boy band sci-fi novella The Album of Dr. Moreau — and this has solidified my opinion that there's nothing this man can't write. So good and so creepy!
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