KENTUCKY DRAGON

An ancient debt haunts a family in Park’s horror novel.

It’s 1998, and 11-year-old Mark Morris has just moved from Schaumburg, Illinois, to Louisville, Kentucky, with his parents and older brother, Don. A thin, creepy man—who has an unknown, menacing history with the boys’ father—arrives at their door; instead of giving them a typical name, he tells Don and Mark to call him “the chicken man.” He knows all about their family, including their older sister, who mysteriously died when Mark was 4. As they try to figure out more about the chicken man, they meet a nun at the neighboring rest home who turns out to be their great-aunt; she horrifyingly tells them that their deceased grandfather was a Nazi, that a family heirloom lamp is made of human skin, and that there’s an outstanding debt related to something agreed to long ago in Dudweiler, Germany. A series of supernatural experiences culminate in a grisly night during which someone is killed, another is horribly maimed, and yet another is stabbed. Eighteen years later, Mark is living in Brooklyn, New York, working as an electrician, when his girlfriend Caitlyn tells him she got a strange call from someone in Germany, claiming to be his sister: “She said some kind of bird man was keeping tabs on you.” The chicken man is back, wreaking havoc on the lives that Mark and his family members have carefully rebuilt. Over the course of this novel, Park ably uses religious symbolism, as well as mythical motifs of ancient Germanic people, demons, and even a dragon, in a story that is certainly not for the faint of heart. It’s a graphically violent tale, featuring such horrors as crucifixion murders, lobotomies performed with icepicks, and body parts torn out—and they’re all described in frightful detail. Themes of trauma and guilt, persisting across generations, effectively underlie the action, and the conclusion hints at a sequel.

A twisty, violent tale of a brutal legacy.