*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book. 

Haunting and visceral, SORROWLAND is the story of a Black intersex teenage mother and her children after leaving a religious compound for the woods. It has a subtle kind of intensity where each passage is bearable, but any literal description of the plot tends toward a catalog of horrors. 

This book has such a beautiful way with language. The words weave and roll; mesmerizing whether describing turning a deer’s sinew into bowstring, the ever-changing wonder of Vern’s children growing up, or the strange and monstrous changes taking over her body. Since it is a horror story about a mother, I’ll clarify that her relationship with her children is not a source of horror. The way the children are described is full of love, exasperation, and endearment, usually in equal parts, wrapped in the tension between protectiveness and fostering their growing autonomy. It’s about a person fostering their own sense of agency as they care for someone else, as they have people to protect.

The worldbuilding inhabits a strange space where many relevant facets of US history are alluded to or perhaps even briefly described, but because one character or another is hearing of them for the first time, the narrative gives space and understanding to pull the reader in if they are similarly unfamiliar. In many ways the true horror is how little of the book requires the speculative elements in order to be terrifying, for often the mundane details are the most grotesque.