WHAT WE HARVEST

A small group of farms with magical crops are threatened by an all-consuming blight that creates zombielike creatures out of the people and animals it infects.

Sixteen-year-old Wren’s family grows rainbow-hued wheat in Hollow’s End, an insular community that guards its clandestine history mightily. Even as Wren’s beloved dog, Teddy, and people from neighboring farms go missing in the woods, returning as mindless creatures with white eyes that try to attack others, Wren’s dad tries to conceal the alchemy that is the source of their livelihood. However, when Wren’s mom and dad also disappear, she is forced to turn to her ex-boyfriend, Derek, for help. From his neighboring farm, she slowly begins to uncover a truth that also involves his family and two others. The richly developed details of the blight and its relationship to the people of Hollow’s End lend interest and mystery to the familiar romance that also lies at the heart of this story. Likewise, the novel offers an original flavor to traditional zombie tropes, balancing taut, desperate, action-oriented escapes with longer passages describing alchemical rituals. Wren reads as White; Derek is cued as biracial, White and Latinx.

A vivid and engrossing horror-tinged tale of magic and corrosive family secrets.