Revenants

The year is 1689. Situated on the northern boundary of the Massachusetts Bay colony, the town of Cold Marsh is a place of secrets, a village characterized by repression and guilt. Fourteen years have passed since the outbreak of King Philip's War. During that summer, the men of Cold Marsh surrounded and destroyed a nearby Native American encampment, massacring the inhabitants. Now darkness has come to the village. Two of the town's young women have vanished under mysterious circumstances, and the country seethes with rumors of witchcraft and devilry. Even their God has abandoned them. When a third young woman disappears, the men of the village determine to leave the safety of the village and enter the other world of the woods in search of her, each man haunted by the Jack o' lanthorn of his own unspeakable secrets.

Revenants is a lyrical evocation of the colonial landscape, a poetic meditation on the hills and wilds of that vanished country. It also brings back to life, with breathing intimacy, the inner landscape of sombre repression known to the settlers of New England. In the words of H.P. Lovecraft: "Divorced from the enlightenment of civilization, the strength of these Puritans turned into singular channels; and in their isolation, morbid self-repression, and struggle for life with relentless Nature, there came to them dark furtive traits from the prehistoric depths of their cold Northern heritage... Erring as all mortals must, they were forced by their rigid code to seek concealment above all else; so that they came to use less and less taste in what they concealed."


Genre: Literary Fiction