Strange Folk: A Novel

“Clairvoyants, seers, myths, legends, rituals, potions and spells, Strange Folk is a phantasmal, down-homey read in a setting where real magic competes with real evil.”

Twenty years after swearing to never return, Opaline (Lee) Carnell reluctantly takes herself back home to Craw Valley in Appalachia. But it's just to regroup, figure things out. Divorce is probably in her future, though she hasn't said that word out loud to her kids yet.

It's a reluctant homecoming, though. Because of her family and the community. She doesn't want to expose her daughter Meredith or her son Cliff to what goes on there.

Oh, it's nothing illegal, at least not very and not very much.

And it's not that people there are quirky or strange or crazy or odd. At least not very and not very much. It's just that Lee's family has special, shall we say, talents? Okay, maybe powers is a better word, powers that can't be explained.

Like healing, hexing, hurting, conjuring.

Lee's people are not merely a closeknit group of individuals, some with familial ties and some with not. They are truly a family in every way. Every witching way.

"The very fact of being a witch wasn't too impressive in Craw Valley; it was well known but rarely acknowledged that some in the community could get rid of warts with the touch of a hand, or blow out the fire in a burn. . . ."

However, since Lee has no place else to go after living in California with her husband Cooper for all those years, she's promised herself she'd try to look at the godforsaken place through fresh eyes even though her own mother sent her out of there for the exact same reason Lee doesn't want her own children there. But they were going to live where Lee felt safest and most loved, the home of her grandmother Belva, the most powerful of the bunch.

"They continued down a one-lane road and passed small, neat salt boxes and prefabricated ranch houses. One decaying wood house stood with an abandoned school bus parked out front and a cracked plastic pool piled in the side yard. And then there were no houses, only a narrow, winding road with a succession of dirt and gravel drives receding into a wall of trees on each side, closing them in. . . .

"After a while, the trees gave way to a clearing with a modest cabin in its center, as if raised from the earth itself. Buckets and barrels sat around its perimeter, waiting for rain, and something copper-colored hung from the tree in front . . . "

Lee stops the car, and they step out:

"Lee took a deep breath in. The air was pure rain-watered wetness and it smelled of trees—the salted bark, the vegetable leaves, the oxygen fumes. She told herself she could appreciate this place like a tourist. No plans to stay long term, just passing through . . ."

Turns out Lee's daughter Meredith who doesn't approve of very many things in her young life likes it there. Cliff, who looks at the world in his own unique way sometimes confusing imagination with reality, likes it there, too. Lee doesn’t want them to like it.

Inside the house: "The small wood-lined living room was the same as it had always been, with the orange polyester couch and the rag rug fraying at the edges. . . . The old money jar stood by the door filled with coins . . .

"The most pronounced change was a spread of picture frames on the east wall. As Lee moved closer, she realized it was every Christmas card she'd ever sent. Fifteen photos of Lee and her family in sweaters, lined up in black plastic Walmart frames. . . ."

Within days Lee reconnects with old friends, and eventually ends up at a party in the woods with her old flame Otis, the person she most wants to see. Drawn to each other like magnets as if no time at all had passed, they make their way into the trees to be alone where they see something they were not meant to see. Her previously favorite, but now silver-haired high school teacher in a compromising position with a young girl Meredith's age.

When Lee tells her grandmother, Belva assures her, ". . . We'll hex him tonight."

Soon after, he's found dead: "Mr. Hall's face and body had grayed and hardened to stone. His eyes were closed, and his mouth was slightly open. His limbs were outstretched, as if he'd died in ecstasy, or as if they'd been arranged by someone else after his death . . . "

Author Alli Dyer's spellbinding story introduces readers to a very real family full of love for each other, but also possessed of secret ways of fixing problems that need to be fixed. The author's atmospheric descriptions of Craw Valley and the people who live there transport readers directly to a mysterious, ethereal but alluring place.

Here with the author's help, Granny Belva shares her recipe for making Love Honey:

1 handful of cotton

2 red clovers

A few drops of honeysuckle nectar

Dash of nutmeg sugar

Put all ingredients inside a copper bee smoker. Light it with a match soaked in rosemary oil and drop it in. Go to a hive you know well at sunrise and say the words while you smoke them.

Come to me, my love

You will find me in the creek swimming you

Or in the kitchen baking you

Or in my bed sleeping you

I will think only of you

And you will think only of me

You will be hungry when you eat

You will be tired when you sleep

Until you come to me

My love

Clairvoyants, seers, myths, legends, rituals, potions and spells, Strange Folk is a phantasmal, down-homey read in a setting where real magic competes with real evil. Don't miss it.