This is the updated Author's Edition- it includes two new short stories and a creature/place index.

Monsters are real, and the United States is infested.

In 1900, a cursed stretch of the Midwestern frontier known as the Infested is overrun with ghosts, monsters, and things that should have stayed buried. Most people avoid it. Desdemona’s family calls it home.

Protected by magic, their homestead is one of the last safe havens for travelers crossing the haunted plains. But Desdemona longs to prove herself beyond its walls, drawn by the darkness outside and by the restless power calling to her.

Then her mother dies. Her father fails to return from the East. And a shadow creature appears on their land.

With bewitching strangers at the door, monsters gathering in the dark, and her siblings divided by old wounds and new resentments, Desdemona is forced to become the leader she never wanted to be—all to protect the people she loves and uncover her true place in the world.

If she fails, her father may come home to find their sanctuary turned graveyard.

Content Note

This novel and the attached short stories contain mature and potentially distressing themes, including eating disorders, anxiety, grief, death, murder, mild body horror, spiders, disease, animal death ( not a dog or cat), generational and family trauma, colonization, and body image issues.

This novel takes place in an alternate universe/history of the United States during the Pioneer times. 

Excerpt

Chapter 1

May 1900

Ash Hollow

Day 1

The United States is Infested, and humans have poisoned it.

They crossed the great divide between the East and West Coasts and died in the attempt. They killed each other, starved, succumbed to disease, buried their dead without a proper ceremony, and abandoned whatever they couldn’t carry. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the land turned on them.

Demons are real. Spirits haunt the world. Monsters dwell in the shadows and forests. Ghosts drift over the plains. Things feed on the dead, infest swamps, and scour deserts.

Draw a jagged line on a map of the United States and outline the barrier on either side of the Infested. Follow the lines of Montana and Wyoming, veer left to cage Utah, then cut straight down to Arizona, finally stitching into Mexico. Then again, from Lake Superior and Wisconsin’s tip, follow a jagged line past Illinois, Tennessee, Mississippi, and straight down, ending in Mexico’s Gulf.

This is the invisible barrier between the West and East Coast, and all that lies between is the Infested. A dangerous land full of monsters.

The East is overpopulated, busy, advanced, cultured, and full of politics, lavish foods, and sin. The only people who come to the West from the East are the brave, the desperate, or the stupid.

You can try to cross through Canada or come up through Mexico by boat, but it is illegal. Those countries fear America. They fear Americans will bring with them the madness that seeps into soil and bone. Getting caught by their government is a death sentence.

It is a three-month journey from Illinois to Wyoming, and even longer if you try to pass through the salt flats to Utah, push north toward Oregon’s green, or chase California’s coastlines.

When people first decided to travel West and see what splendor lay on the other side of the U.S., they knew there would be problems: famine, disease, drought, extreme temperatures, and wild animals. They didn’t respect the land or each other, and many paid the price.

As each wagon train departed, the tales of what lay beyond Illinois grew darker, and the number of people making it to the West got slimmer.

Hundreds of thousands of people decided to cross the trails West between 1811 and 1830, and only half made it. The plains didn’t turn sour overnight. It took years for the government to realize whole trains had gone missing, and even more time to learn why. Finally, in 1835, the government from the East forbade any more wagon trains West. The West, cut off from many luxuries, invested time and money in retaking the trails and making the Infested safe enough to ship goods.

Two caravans make the journey from West to East. On odd years, one from Utah to Illinois; on even years, from Oregon to Missouri. Sometimes they come and go without issue. Other times, they never come back. They bring supplies and news, paid for by the gold and silver found predominantly in the West.

Almost no one lives in the Infested, and only a few families, like the Ash family, make it their home.

They had no neighbors, no church, and no stores near them. They didn’t even know what it would be like to have people around to talk to other than themselves. Ash Hollow was in Nebraska, within The Infested, one hundred and fifty miles from the Wyoming border.

For Desdemona and her siblings, home was all they knew. The books in the parlor and office were the only windows to the outside world.