Rest Stop by Nat Cassidy
Shortwave Media (October 2024)
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
I read Nat Cassidy’s novel Mary: An Awakening of Terror last summer and can’t shake how it made me feel more than a year later. Carpeted in historical and generational trauma, Mary was about women, especially “women who are only invisible until somebody needs to be blamed.”
Above the novel’s intricate weavings of religious fanaticism and Cassidy’s protagonist’s unsettling behavior, Mary is about power and the tendency to mythologize those who claim it like some god. Given the political climate, it’s a haunting reminder that this narrative has long existed in the real world and feels all the more suffocating.
Rest Stop, Cassidy’s latest release, a horror novella about a troubled musician, Abe, traveling to visit a dying relative who tormented him through childhood with spats of disapproval and disappointment, dissects the ghosts of historical trauma.Continue Reading
Clay McLeod Chapman writes books, comic books, children’s books, as well as for film and television. His most recent novel, What Kind of Mother and Ghost Eaters are grief horror stories. Chapman’s vibrant personality and energy are magnetizing, and seemingly contradictory to his writing material. Todd Keisling and I joked that the Whisper Down The Lane author is “like a cup of coffee” — rejuvenating.
