We have all heard stories, either the ones about our family that struck us as strange (I have a great uncle who swore that he saw the Virgin Mary crying over the trenches at the exact moment that the cease fire was announced on November 11, 1918) and some that just freak us out (there was a haunted hotel in my hometown that was vacant forever - very beautiful and old though and since its been torn down every business that has gone up in its place has failed. Coincidence? I don't think so.) For most of us these are just stories that we might pass on and we all agree could be "turned into something" but few of us ever do anything with them. Cherie Priest is the exception to that laziness rule - she hears a story, glimpses the thread of something interesting and eventually, in one form or another, she turns it into a complete work that exceeds its origins in some respects but never forgets where it came from either.

She is, in essence, the very definition of storyteller.

I read Cherie's upcoming novella, Those Who Went Remain There Still, last week (after I met my deadline for my essay and it was happily accepted with no problems - this was my reward!). The book has two parallel storylines: one about Daniel Boone and his crew cutting the Wilderness Trail in 1775 while pursued by some kind of monster and the second, in 1899, when the descendants of one of Boone's men find themselves with a family mystery that involves a cave and a missing will. To put an end to a long standing family feud six men must go into the cave and determine their patriarch's final wishes for the family land. The cave has long been avoided by everyone and is thought to be haunted. One of the men, who left the family feud and chaos behind years before, is particularly torn about entering the cave. When he was young his sister disappeared - after she told him that the cave "called to her". Meshack can't forget one of their last conversations:

Winnter turned to me then, and stared at me hard - in that way where I swear, she saw right past me and was watching something else. "That's cause whatever's calling you, it's so far away you can hardly hear it. This isn't like that, not for me. I hear it clear, because it's close. I'm going to leave this place as sure as you will, but I'm not going with you, and I'm not going far."

Two days later Winnter vanished into the cave. No matter how many years have gone by, would you want to go in there and see what happened to her - or discover just what the hell was "calling to her"?

Nope. Me neither.

The story here is what happens in that cave and how it all ties to the long ago Boone expedition. What I thought as I read it though was that Cherie could have taken the Boone story, with all its history of what Boone really did do in Kentucky and who he really was, and made it a "Daniel Boone: Monster Killer" short story. It still would have been suspenseful and scary and fun and I'm sure a good read. But that is not enough for this author and so into the Boone story she tied a family story that had nagged at her for years about cutting the Wilderness Road, a haunted cave, a family feud and just how many of her ancestors went underground one day and how many came running back out. The real truth of that story long faded in the last century but she picked away at it until it became coherent enough to form a complete tale around. That became Those Who Went Remain There Still and it is excellent.

This is a story of family, of reinvention, of the ties that can not be cut, and of something way gone creepy that likes to eat meat. It is horror in that you do have a monster but like all of Cherie's stories it is also a story of place and the people who live in that place. This is part of why I enjoy her work so much - her stories can not be transplanted to other locations on a whim; they are deeply ingrained in the territory she places them in. Just as the Eden Moore trilogy would only work in Chickamauga, Chattanooga and Florida, and just as Dreadful Skin demands a Mississippi riverboat and southwestern sojourn, Those Who Went... holds firm to Kentucky. Cherie recognizes that we may all be of one country but the parts we hail from are vitally different; they hold history and stories in different ways. This respect for place is key to why I read her books - the thoughtful walks on the scary side are the added bonus that puts them over the top.

I've written about Cherie's Eden Moore trilogy before - and reviewed the third book, Not Flesh Nor Feathers, last fall. I also reviewed her three werewolf tales, Dreadful Skin. Along with all her books they can be enjoyed simply as great stories but consider this bit from an interview between Cherie and John Scalzi:

Also, yes - I've had an unexplainable experience or two personally. One of them worked its way into Four and Twenty Blackbirds, at least loosely. Pine Breeze (the abandoned institution) really did exist until it was torn down a few years ago, and I really did go there a few times. The last time I went, my friends and I were chased out of the building by something we couldn't see. It scared the s**t out of us, and yes, that's the short version. Also, I've been to the Chickamauga Battlefield more than a few times - at least once in the middle of the night, when the fog was so thick you couldn't see the hand you were holding. If you can go there, do that, and not feel the weight of history (and 35,000 dead people), then I don't even want to know you. Not on Halloween, anyway.

She has said Four and Twenty Blackbirds started mostly with a little girl drawing chalk pictures on a sidewalk - a common enough thing for six year olds, but clearly triggered much more (along with a dream) for Cherie. I think the reason why she is able to create so much out of fragments (haunted places, half remembered family stories, landmarks on a city's streets that are barely noticed by most of the population) is that she is a writer who is actively, constantly, continuously looking for story. She wants to see what else is there and so she does, simple as that.

The writing part - well that's where it gets hard. But most of us never even get to the writing part, because we just never see.

I know that Cherie Priest has many fans but she has certainly not broken through to the level of popularity that I think her talent deserves. Somehow, when someone hears "horror" it relegates an author to a different place - a place that is not nearly as valued for its literary merits as the author deserves. (See Stephen King, Anne Rice, Caitlin Kiernan for further proof.) It's all good and well that King and Rice are making a ton of money but they are the exception and they don't get nearly as much respect for their work as a lot of completely crappy so-called literary authors seem to. (The list would be far too long for me to include here.) Cherie Priest is one of my all-time favorite writers; she is right up there with Ray Bradbury, Andrea Barrett and Scarlett Thomas as an author that never disappoints. I suppose we could say she writes literary horror if that will make everyone feel better about reading her books. Call it whatever you want, I just know she is good and that's plenty for this reader - in fact that's everything.

[Those Who Went Remain There Still is due for a December release from Sub Press. My review will be in my October Bookslut column. If you purchase the limited edition it includes a chapbook explaining where the story's idea came from. Cherie also has a new novel due in December from Tor - Fathom. Hopefully I will be reviewing that one this fall as well.]

Other Wicked Cool Overlooked Books:

What Happens Here by Tara Altebrando at Bildungsroman:"They had made plans, so many plans, about their futures. They would stay connected past high school, going to college together, traveling the world together, maybe even marrying twin brothers. They would always be the best of friends, as thick as thieves, as close as sisters, no matter what. That is what they planned.

This is what happened instead."

And TadMack is in with Patricia McKillip's Solstice Wood over at Finding Wonderland (this is a book I love as well): "See, there's something about the dark and scary trees in Solstice Wood, and something about Sylvia that her grandparents, who raised her, don't know... and it's the reason she's stayed gone all these years. It's the reason she knows better than to stay at the house near Solstice Wood for very long. And no matter that her grandmother insists she stay and be introduced to the sewing circle, her group of loyal old friends in the Fiber Guild who sit in the parlor and stitch away their lives with her, Sylvia has no plans to stay. She can't. What her grandmother doesn't realize is that some things in life are more than they seem."