By MARC LAIDLAW (PS Publishing; 2015)
Author Marc Laidlaw successfully modernized H.P. Lovecraft back in 1996, with the well-received (but little read) horror novel THE 37th MANDALA, and did so again in 2015, with WHITE SPAWN. A novella-length take on the maestro’s “Shadow Over Innsmouth” (1931), WHITE SPAWN offers most everything one could want in a neo-Lovecraftian account, paying lip service to old school weird fiction perimeters within a very up-to-date milieu.
That milieu is a minutely described mountain community where a court officer, following a swim in the river near his trailer home, drives his truck to the courthouse where he works and holds a convicted prisoner, a severely wounded old man, at gunpoint. The officer then drives his prisoner back to the river and, surrounded by cops, pushes the old man into the water, informing an arresting officer that “He’s just my daddy.”
Next we’re introduced to Kayla, a young girl residing in a secluded home adjacent to a river (apparently the same river that was introduced in the opening passage) bordered by dead salmon that have swum upstream to lay eggs and die. The book’s main portion involves Kayla befriending a young boy named Thor who lives with his grandmother Freya in a trailer (the same one, apparently, that was mentioned in chapter one) and claims to have numerous uncles residing in the area, all descendants of “the old ways. The real old ways.”
Kayla and Thor are both well drawn and complex, rendering their exploits, which include the rescuing of a trapped salmon and getting chased around by Freya, all the more affecting. Freya is worried about Thor consorting with Kayla, as it might result in him “tainting the old stock.” It seems that, just as the river salmon are swimming upstream to lay eggs, Thor’s family members are readying themselves for a hatching of their own.
This brief narrative is nothing if not well-rounded. It offers an atmospheric depiction of backwoods America (if an actual location was specified anywhere in the text I missed it), an ominous depiction of Lovecraftian menace, some pulpy derring-do and a touching relationship between two youthful outsiders. WHITE SPAWN is, in short, a rare example of a book that can be said to contain a little something for everyone.