Dark Sisters
A visceral tour de force told from multiple viewpoints, Kristi DeMeester’s Dark Sisters combines horror and historical fiction to blood-chilling effect. Set in the aptly-named town of Hawthorne Springs—the allusion to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter should not be missed—the novel divides between three female-centered storylines that intersect and finally erupt in a communal act of reprisal, pointing to a future which will enable the protagonists to gain a sense of closure. The first narrative takes place in 1750 and focuses on Anne Bolton, a wisewoman suspected of being a witch who is forced to flee her hometown with her daughter Florence, who might not be on her mother’s side.
From Anne and Florence, the trajectory travels to the local preacher’s daughter, Camilla, in 2007, and to Mary, the 1950s housewife and mother, who longs for a different kind of love and fulfilment than her community can offer. As the women’s lives are laid open, and the connections between them revealed, the dark and polluted well that feeds the heart of Hawthorne Springs is exposed, hinting at a legacy of exploitation, torture, and suffering that cries out for a reckoning.
A horror story in which the physical experience is as vividly rendered as the spiritual agony endured by the women, Dark Sisters is a deeply satisfying revenge fantasy aimed at the patriarchy. The language beautifully captures the different time periods, and the characters are life-like and sympathetically drawn. A must for fans of feminist horror.
