Friday, June 6, 2025

Cottonmouth By Kealan Patrick Burke

Available for the first time in paperback and digital.
A thrilling prequel to Kealan Patrick Burke's southern gothic horror novel Kin.
 Cottonmouth is set in the aftermath of the Great Depression in Tennessee, a time of religious fervor and charlatanism, of thieves, murderers, and moonshiners.

Here you'll meet Horseshoe Collins, a traveler on a vengeful search for the father who abandoned him; Billy Wray, a snake-handling Pentecostal preacher bringing the promise of salvation to rural communities paralyzed by fear of the Devil; and Jonah Merrill, a child grieving the loss of his beloved father and tormented by his mother's wrath.

With the threat of a second World War looming on the horizon, destiny will bring these three people together and set innocent young Jonah on the path to his eventual fate and a new name: Papa-In-Gray, the patriarch of the dreaded Merrill family whose horrific exploits were first introduced to the world in KIN.






 Cottonmouth is the prequel to Burke's horror masterpiece, Kin.

This can be read as a stand-alone, but if you have not read Kin, don't deprive yourself; read them both! Long before we meet Papa-in-Gray, the murderous religious zealot in Kin, he was just Jonah, an ordinary boy, growing up poor and neglected after his father passed away and his mother couldn't be bothered to care for him.

I'm not going to say much else about the plot except that it's a strong case for nurture vs nature in creating monsters because Jonah was not born evil. He was not a bad seed. Who knows what kind of man he would have grown up to be if he had not suffered so much abuse? I read Kin close to a decade ago, and I never thought I would feel sympathy for Papa-in-Gray, yet here I am wishing I could go back in time and offer the boy he used to be a shred of comfort. I can count on one hand the times I have gone back to reread a book, but Cottonmouth has made me crave a reread of Kin with an intensity that I can not ignore.

The writing is flawless, and the story is brutal and mesmerizing. 

5 out of 5 stars

available for pre-order

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