06/01/2026 Guest Reviews by Kerry E.B Black: THE BOG WIFE by Kay Chronister
- Candace Nola
- 12 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Today, we have another guest review from local Pittsburgh author, Kerry E.B. Black! Check out her thoughts on her most recent read below! I love the cover for this one, gorgeous!
THE BOG WIFE
By Kay Chronister
Deep in a secluded pocket in West Virginia, a once wealthy and important family tends a bog, as their family always has, but something is wrong in Kay Chronister’s Gothic folksy novel The Bog Wife. This is told from the perspective of each of the surviving siblings of the Haddesley family, which highlights the dysfunction.
One sister “got out,” earned a GED, put herself in therapy, held a job, and was living a relatively normal existence until she hears from her younger sister. Her presence is required, because their “patriarch” was soon to die. With all the Haddesley hands on deck in their dilapidated manorhouse, they enacted the required rituals.
When one fails, their entire belief system is thrown into turmoil. Some cling to the “old ways,” others prepare to cut and run, and some try to straddle the situation. At the heart of all of the trouble, though, is the original conscript, their isolation and ignorance, and the bog wife herself. Like most Southern Gothic works, this takes its time arriving at its unsettling reveals.
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More about Kerry E.B. Black
Kerry E.B. Black writes from an over-stuffed little house situated along a fog-enshrouded river in the land where Romero's Dead roamed. Her children think she's dull, and their dogs agree, but the family cats, Poe and Hemingway, feel differently. The felines find a kinship with their nocturnal buddy and encourage Kerry to write.
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