Having a young child who loves stories allows me the singular joy of rehashing all my favorites. Every night we’ve been reading through a compilation of monsters from classic literature. We’ve talked about Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, the Kraken, and the Yeti. He’s always asking, “But are they real?” Lauren Bolger’s novel The Barre Incidents shows why and how these stories persist even without concrete proof that these creatures do. In this page-turning novel radiating with energy and heart, Bolger weaves legends of the Mothman, Indrid Cold, and Norse gods into a fictional story set in Barre, Vermont, a mining town with the world’s largest granite quarry.

As the novel begins, Kara is attending her father’s funeral, having sat by his bedside as he passed away from lung disease caused by his work at the granite quarry. Their relationship was a close one, and she’s dealing with the first stage of grief, when the familiar world starts to seem distorted. A new reality begins to take hold: the dead in this small town are not at rest. 

She thought about Dad in his coffin again. When he was all dressed up, and she was alone with him this morning, right before the service, she’d sworn there’d been a thunk.

It couldn’t be, though. It was the ducts in the ceiling. Only she’d backed up, terrified, and she could swear the coffin was wiggling on its stand. She stood there for minutes, maybe three, maybe five, and she swore something was keeping it going awhile, though she’d only heard the sound that one time. 

Bolger captures so well the world-changing despair and loneliness that follow the death of a loved one. Kara can’t help thinking of her father, “picturing her dad again. At Hope. In the ground. With all this craziness going on. What was he doing right now? Lying there dead? Screaming for help?” She worries, “He’s not resting. I don’t know what’s happening with him but he’s suffering.” 

Soon after the funeral, Kara goes with her friend Alec to Hope Cemetery, where her father is buried. She needs to convince herself that his body is at rest. This trip marks the beginning of the novel’s central quest. Kara begins to experience firsthand the strange phenomena that have long been discussed in the town, including her own encounters with two local folk monsters, Indrid Cold and the Mothman. She also uncovers details about a terrifying incident from her father’s youth. With Alec she sets out to understand what lies beneath these stories and altered realities, and to ensure that her beloved father’s soul is at peace in the afterlife. 

Death reminds the living of their insignificance. The appearance of monsters takes this reminder to the next level. They loom over this entire narrative as examples of larger and more powerful forces, beyond human understanding and control. Kara catches a glimpse of this as she ponders the impossibility of it all: “This ancient universe, this impossible place. And here they were, now. Living in this century. An unthinkable body count of all who had lived, and then died before this moment. And the fact that the same inevitable fate awaited them.” 

Occasionally, the story spirals out of control. Some chapters from the creatures’ perspectives lack the emotional depth of Kara’s personal story. There are too many supernatural creatures to keep track of, including zombie miners and doglike people, and their stories sometimes jumble together. We know Kara and Alec share a long-standing attraction, and a misunderstanding has driven them apart. Some of their interactions—hesitant flirting and joking—feel oddly superficial, especially given their history and the otherworldly and stressful circumstances they now face together.

But Bolger always brings it back to what she does best,  by crafting believable characters worth caring about. When Kara and Alec team up with other townspeople, these moments deliver thrilling, fast-paced writing with an emotional punch. Charlie, an old friend of Kara’s dad, tells her: “Welcome to the club. I’ve been keeping my story pretty close to the chest for what, forty-five years now?” Later, when things get really amped up, Cedro, a stoneworker near the quarry who lost his partner to Indrid Cold many years ago, must face him again and does so with bravery and goodness. 

All this conveys the novel’s essential message: The humans are facing forces far stronger than themselves, but they band together to face the monsters as best they can. In a vast and unknowable universe, that’s really all they have at their disposal, but it isn’t nothing. 

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Lauren Bolger is the author of Kill Radio, published by Malarkey Books in 2023. Her short fiction has appeared in In Somnio, a Tenebrous Press Modern Gothic anthology and Tales from the Clergy, an October Nights Press anthology based on songs by the band Ghost. More can be found on her website at www.laurenbolger.com.

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Emily Webber is a reader of all the things hiding out in South Florida with her husband and son. A writer of criticism, fiction, and nonfiction, her work has appeared in The Rumpus, the Ploughshares Blog, The Writer, Hippocampus, and elsewhere.  She’s the author of a chapbook of flash fiction, Macerated. Read more at emilyannwebber.com.