Genre: Paranormal
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay
Reviewer: Ulysses
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About The Book
Not long after their move into Blackstone, married couple Mitch and Buck begin to witness strange sightings of shadowy figures, physical manifestations and inexplicable events taking place in the former Sheppard family estate nestled in the Northern Poconos of Pennsylvania.
Through séances, they learn from the spirit of Jedidiah Sheppard that he has not been able to cross over into the afterlife because the truth behind his sudden disappearance in 1965 has never been solved. During this journey, Mitch and Buck and an eccentric psychic, Gladys Munch aka Madame Fortunesta, encounter interference from the spirit of a Lenape medicine man, Mesingwe Medeu, who protects Jedidiah’s spirit.
Mitch and Buck eventually realize that they must find Jedidiah’s remains and let the authorities discover through modern detective work the evidence needed to try and convict the murderer. But is it too late for Jedidiah’s spirit to find eternal peace?
The Review
What’s most fun about Patrick Field’s ghost stories is the way he draws on traditional tropes while adding twists that set them apart from others in their genre.
Mitch MacLeod and Buck Waltham are a middle-aged gay couple who’ve been together a long time. Field makes a point of noting that they both come from conservative southern backgrounds, and that neither felt comfortable enough about being gay to come out in the early 1990s. At a break in their respective careers, they take the plunge leave Manhattan, purchasing a Victorian mansion in a small town in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Called “Blackstone,” the house is a local landmark that has been unoccupied for some time. The Sheppard family who built it (and abandoned it) were anthracite coal moguls until the industry failed in the late 1960s.
We have some sense of what’s going to happen because of a marvelously lurid prologue, setting the stage for the restless spirit that, Mitch and Buck discover, haunts Blackstone.
What switches things around in this narrative is the fact that Mitch, who is a novelist, is inclined to ask “what can I do to help?” rather than screaming for the police (or an exorcist) when things get weird at Blackstone. The couple begins to dig into local lore and get to know the community in the small town of Carthage, Pennsylvania. Under the guise of wanting to learn more about their huge, semi-furnished house, they dig into the mystery that presents itself, and, to their surprise, begin to make friends in the community.
Even though the reader knows from the start a major part of the background that drives the plot, the author adds a surprise that amplifies the emotional trauma of the events at Blackstone. Ultimately, both the main characters and the reader are drawn into the story, as a supernatural tale of murder becomes a lesson in redemption and spiritual salvation.
4 stars.
The Reviewer
Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave It to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale, and was trained to be a museum curator at the University of Delaware. A curator since 1980, Ulysses has never stopped writing fiction for the sheer pleasure of it. He created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel to Desmond, is his second novel.
Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of over 41 years and their two almost-grown children.
By the way, the name Ulysses was not his parents’ idea of a joke: he is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant, and his mother was the President’s last living great-grandchild. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City.
