We Are Always Tender with Our Dead
(Burnt Sparrow, 1)
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Michael McDowell’s Blackwater meets Clive Barker’s The Great and Secret Show in the disturbing first installment of a new trilogy of intense, visceral, beautifully written queer horror set in a small New England town.
A chilling supernatural tale of transgressive literary horror from the Bram Stoker Award® finalist and Splatterpunk Award-winning author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke.
The lives of those residing in the isolated town of Burnt Sparrow, New Hampshire, are forever altered after three faceless entities arrive on Christmas morning to perform a brutal act of violence—a senseless tragedy that can never be undone. While the townspeople grieve their losses and grapple with the aftermath of the attack, a young teenage boy named Rupert Cromwell is forced to confront the painful realities of his family situation. Once relationships become intertwined and more carnage ensues as a result of the massacre, the town residents quickly learn that true retribution is futile, cruelty is earned, and certain thresholds must never be crossed no matter what.
Engrossing, atmospheric, and unsettling, this is a devastating story of a small New England community rocked by an unforgivable act of violence. Writing with visceral intensity and profound eloquence, LaRocca journeys deep into the dark heart of Burnt Sparrow, leaving you chilled to the bone and wanting more.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
LaRocca (Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke) opens his Burnt Sparrow series with this bleak contemporary horror outing set in a small New Hampshire town that feels cursed with misery and violence. Teenage protagonist Rupert Cromwell's mother recently died and his father's grip on reality has been loosening ever since. When a horrific crime rocks their community, leaving many dead, the town elders make the bizarre decision to leave the crime scene exactly as is, bodies and all, "for the foreseeable future," and tap Rupert and his dad to serve as "Preservers" responsible for ensuring that the scene remains intact. Things take an even stranger and more sinister turn as, through this job, Rupert becomes unwittingly entangled with the town's most dangerous man and his deeply closeted wife. Themes of sexual identity and discovery figure prominently alongside an examination of death and its attendant rituals. LaRocca creates a lushly gothic atmosphere that smothers both the reader and his characters. The extremely graphic violence, decay, and taboo sex scenes may prove too much for squeamish readers who aren't prepared to wade into territory quite this dark. Only those with iron stomachs need apply.
