The Remaking by Clay McLeod Chapman

"Ella Louise has lived in the woods surrounding Pilot’s Creek, Virginia, for nearly a decade. Publicly, she and her daughter Jessica are shunned by their upper-crust family and the Pilot’s Creek residents. Privately, desperate townspeople visit her apothecary for a cure to what ails them—until Ella Louise is blamed for the death of a prominent customer. Accused of witchcraft, both mother and daughter are burned at the stake in the middle of the night. Ella Louise’s burial site is never found, but the little girl has the most famous grave in the South: a steel-reinforced coffin surrounded by a fence of interconnected white crosses.

Their story will take the shape of an urban legend as it’s told around a campfire by a man forever marked by his boyhood encounters with Jessica. Decades later, a boy at that campfire will cast Amber Pendleton as Jessica in a ’70s horror movie inspired by the Witch Girl of Pilot’s Creek. Amber’s experiences on that set and its meta-remake in the ’90s will ripple through pop culture, ruining her life and career after she becomes the target of a witch hunt. Amber’s best chance to break the cycle of horror comes when a true-crime investigator tracks her down to interview her for his popular podcast. But will this final act of storytelling redeem her—or will it bring the story full circle, ready to be told once again? And again. And again…"

I listened to the audiobook of this novel on my drive from New Mexico back to Kansas City with my fiancé. I have to say, there’s nothing creepier than listening to a ghost story while driving through the rural southwest. It is a story told in four parts: An old ghost story around the campfire, the movie based on that campfire story, the remake of that movie, and a podcast to tie it all together.

This was such an interesting book, but it was difficult to stomach at times. The basic premise is that a woman and her child are burned at the stake for being witches in a small town. And to get their revenge, the ghosts drive people to tell their story over and over and over again. It was quite an interesting premise and definitely a different twist on the classic ghost story. Everything was told in such excruciating detail, until the end. And then everything got vague and less than clear about what was going on. Which I found annoying and left me with a lot of questions in the end. I also never want to hear eyes being described at snot ever again.

I will say that while I still find my initial assessment holds, this book has haunted me in a way. I find myself thinking about this book, the remake happening in the book, the characters. I didn't really expect for this book to stick with me quite so much when I originally reviewed it. But it definitely has, in unexpected ways.

---

Genre: horror

Representation:

Content Warnings: Violence, violence against women, implications of rape, murder, gore