In this epistolary novel set in 19th-century England, a brother’s sudden return ushers a darkness into his sister’s home. 

Margaret Saville is left alone to run the household while her husband, Philip, is away on business, fecklessly turning to domestic obligations as a way to manage her loneliness. Then her brother, Robin, abruptly appears after a three-year absence, “penniless and beaten” after a harrowing experience at sea. He was the captain of a ship that explored the unforgiving waters of the Arctic. Robin was always a vigorous man, an autodidact known for his insatiable curiosity, but now there’s “something rather shattered about him”—he’s not only physically diminished, but spiritually exhausted as well. He’s also stubbornly laconic and avoids any conversation about whatever experience devastated him. Then a mysterious Russian, Mr. Andropov, a carpenter on Robin’s ship, arrives and explains “the strange time” at sea that shook the captain to his core, a tale hauntingly related by Morrissey (Crowsong for the Stricken, 2017, etc.). Meanwhile, Margaret grapples with demons of her own—her young son, Maurice, dies of illness, a torment that undermines her faith in God. In addition, she hasn’t heard from Philip in weeks, and she fretfully fears the worst, especially as her financial circumstances become increasingly precarious. In a tantalizing subplot, Margaret befriends Mary Shelley, the not-yet-famous author and wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, who struggles to produce her first book. (This storyline also effectively dates the setting of the novel to about 1815.)  The entirety of Morrissey’s tale is told from the first-person perspective of Margaret, conveyed in a series of letters to Philip. The prose is mercurial, especially the dialogue, which can be beautifully refined and moving: “I find I cannot fault him, for loneliness is a hard master, inflicting his lashes most vigorously during the quietest moments.” But it can also be clumsily overwrought and baroque, as when Mary discusses her husband’s genius: “Words flow from him like rays from the sun, and just as golden, only ceasing for necessary nocturnal rest; and I am not confident he fully comprehends that that is not a quality granted to all mortals in equal measure.” Further, Margaret’s “compulsive writing” can be exasperatingly long-winded and disorderly—even she calls them her “meandering missives.” Too often and at too great length her attention dwells on household matters tangential to the main plot and themes. Yet Morrissey magisterially conjures—first by incremental inches and then in a crashing crescendo—a fearsome atmosphere of something vague but evil. The author builds that cloud of foreboding out of pieces that seem disconnected but finally cohere in a univocal mood: Philip’s worrisome silence, the death of a child, and Margaret’s resentful conclusion that God has abandoned her. In addition, the author cleverly ties that mounting malevolence to Mary’s own writing in a way that genuinely adds to the story. 

A fantastically chilling psychodrama intelligently woven into literary history.

A professor applies to become part of a popular writer’s outlandish literary stunt in this novel.

Literature professor Christopher Krafft is on his way to Chicago for a unique conference organized by bestselling author Elizabeth Winters. The Logos Alive project selected 753 applicants to attend, all of whom had a single word assigned to them that will later be compiled for the prologue for Winters’ next novel. Chris’ journey takes a bizarre turn when news breaks that Winters has died en route in a plane crash. Stunned attendees show up at the conference to hear from her partner, who tells them about the next part of the project. Each participant (all of them literary junkies) will have a microchip implanted that contains 100 words of the forthcoming Winters novel. But the book won’t be published for more than 100 years, when scientists will retrieve the chips and the manuscript will be reassembled. Of course, the Logos participants have to agree to not be cremated. Chris, who is newly single after his girlfriend left him, is enough of a Winters fan to eagerly agree to the chip, and his new conference friend Beth also signs on. But with Chris despairing over his ex and Beth just a temporary companion, he struggles to unlock Winters’ mystery amid a sea of the author’s other admirers. Morrissey’s concise novel is delightfully literary and pulls in enough modern tech and internet realities to keep the genre current. The story revels in a background debate about fame versus talent and whether Winters’ bizarre stunts are her only offering, a view voiced mainly by Chris’ former girlfriend. It’s all approached very warmly, this desire these devotees have for a mystery, breaking news, and to feel a part of something grand. Strongly written with some light moments, the tale delivers an up-in-the-air premise that nicely amplifies its introspective tone.

An inventive, reflective story about cultural phenomena and personal connections to literature.

Two families seek a midwife in Morrissey’s literary novel.

In 1907, in a rural Midwestern village, two women go into labor during a snowstorm. Emma Houndstooth is the only midwife in the area, and both women are desperate to have her by their side. Roberta Frye has sent her daughter, Bitty, out into the deep snow to Houndstooth Farm, but the girl quickly becomes lost in the blizzard. She’s forced to take shelter in the Hollis Woods, a local forest named for the “Hollis children who, decades before, wandered one by one into the unnamed woods until all five were gone, never heard from again.” Meanwhile, Emma—who hasn’t overseen a successful birth in nearly two years—has traveled to the bedside of 16-year-old Sarah Johnson, whose pregnancy is being kept a secret by the rest of her family. Other characters are on the move as well that night: a farmer grieving his declining wife, the coroner forced to store the dead in a shed in winter, and two young men, one of whom may be the father of Sarah’s baby (not to mention a pack of increasingly bold coyotes—and a possible Native American crow-god). As they seek out the midwife and one another, these characters can’t help but disturb their respective pasts, as if leaving footprints in the falling snow. Morrissey’s lyrical prose, which changes its rhythm depending on which character’s head he inhabits, captures the textures and cosmologies of this small, hard world. Here he describes the contents of a farmer’s almanac: “a planting chart aligned with the zodiac, the many uses of a poultice made from Indian mint and reduced goat urine, how to predict the weather with a pig’s spleen, the best broths for earache, how to use an ox skull to intensify the light from a bullseye lantern.” This is a ghost story that changes shape as often as its ghosts do, and patient readers will enjoy every permutation.

A snowy gothic tale of life, death, and birth.

This varied collection of short stories and sonnets delves into themes of life, death, love, and war.

Morrissey opens his thoughtfully crafted book with an introduction recounting the trials and tribulations of self-publishing a book of collected works at a time when streaming platforms are grabbing potential readers’ attention. After plans to traditionally publish a collection fell through, Morrissey was inspired to create Twelve Winters, a press that focuses on innovative stories for avid readers. He stresses that “the worlds created through fictive imagination…will always come…to their fullest fruition via the participation of the reader.” This opens the door to allow readers to bring their own interpretations, and their own inspirations, to the stories and sonnets that follow. The collection is divided into three sections of short stories (“Crowsong Stories,” “Transitional Stories,” and “Early Stories”) and one of sonnets. The first two parts, especially “Transitional Stories,” contain deeply descriptive, imaginative, and sometimes haunting tales; the author excels in setting an atmospheric and natural scene, namely in the evocative stories “A Wintering Place” and “Communion With the Dead,” which wrestle with ideas of life and death in vivid, descriptive prose: “He had the mad notion this was not Angela at all but a stranger staging a malignant prank, or even some otherworld demon toying with his soul.” In the third part, he turns the spotlight toward characters; often, the narrators are flawed men living ordinary lives, and though some rely on tired tropes (such as attractive, empty young women), the stories are short, powerful, and simply written, making the reader’s interpretation an important contribution. The sonnets embrace similar themes of growth and change (“Seedlings,” “Obsolescence”), death (“Shroud,” “Pilgrim,” “Acts,” “Dignity”), and the beauty found in everyday life (“Ingots,” “Symmetry”). Morrissey does an excellent job of blending vastly different stories and sonnets together to create one cohesive color—and then places the paintbrush in the reader’s hand.

A thoughtful and evocative collection of tales and poems.

Morrissey’s (Weeping with an Ancient God, 2014, etc.) novel in stories tells of the residents of a Midwestern town in the 1950s as they deal with a plague and personal issues.

The author states in an introduction that the 12 stories in this book may be read in any order, which will change how the reader views the overall narrative. Perhaps the story starts with the tale of Old Man Stevenson battling a crow, which he believes took his wife, Clara, away years ago. Or perhaps it starts with the disruption of the town’s Passion play by Rhonda Holcomb, whose dissatisfaction with her own marriage boils over after she puts a new resident, Mrs. Espejo, in charge of the production. Or it could begin with the very first story, which introduces the O’Brien family, who begin showing symptoms of a plague. When this happens, the town custom is to quarantine the home and carefully deliver supplies to the family; when there are no longer any signs of life, the house is burned down. Depending on where the reader starts, they may see a different character as the primary protagonist. But although the narrative is malleable, the vignettes all feature people weighed down by foreboding; there’s always a sense that something is coming for his characters, although Morrissey never defines it clearly. Indeed, they never seem to be able to truly define their own unease—even as the author makes readers feel it, too. References place the book in the mid-’50s, and the author describes the small, unnamed town in loving detail, but there’s also a feeling of detachment, as if all of this is happening in a place apart from our own. It also hints at the supernatural, especially when different characters encounter people in crowlike outfits, but it never presents events that couldn’t be ascribed to the natural world

A work that resists easy description; recommended for those looking for something strange and beautiful.