Casey does for Pennsylvania what King does for Maine
Jackie may be an imaginative boy in a town where strange occurrences aren’t really that strange, but being tasked with a serious assignment by the Queen of the fairies crosses the line of sanity. Or does it? An odd blue dog follows Jackie around town, but other people can see it, so the boy isn’t making things up. Plus, he gets his hands on some otherworldly physical objects that lend credibility to his story. As the years go by, Jackie comes to terms with his odd relationship with the gentry, a supernatural group including the Queen, whom his grandmother has often warned him away from. But why did the Queen choose Jackie in the first place? His assignment, to write the Queen’s story, has been a failure like so many things in his life. And what do the fairies ultimately want with humans? Throughout the years, Jackie carries the burden of telling the story of the fairies, but how can he tell a story that he doesn’t fully understand? What he discovers about human history could change life as we know, that is, if he can ever get the story on paper.
If you enjoy examining the psyches of some eccentric characters, FREAKSBURG will surely scratch that odd itch. Obviously the paranormal characters are filled with their own brand of peculiarities, and Jackie is clearly no run-of-the-mill 70s kid, but the strangest vibe of all comes from Granny with her unusual intuition and abrasive personality. The notion that the narrator is recalling the bizarre happenings from a youth many years gone by will leave readers struggling to separate fact from fiction. A genuine sense of unease permeates the pages, even though the actual scares are kept to a minimum. In this way, the suspense builds through psychological means rather than relying on gore, clichéd monsters or frequent jump scenes. The local dialect, with its rustic flair, paired with era-specific habits and pursuits, will feel like a distorted trip through vintage Appalachia. Like looking through odd sepia-toned photographs from an old memory box, Casey does for Pennsylvania what King does for Maine in this region-specific horror novel. Unmitigated fun shrouded in a fine coating of coal dust and 1970s nostalgia, FREAKSBURG is a trippy snapshot of Americana that won’t reveal its secrets until the final perplexing page.
