The Bog Wife: Strange and Haunting

 

 

The Bog Wife (2024)

By Kay Chronister

Counterpoint, 307pages.

★★★★

 

The Bog Wife Is one of the most unusual books of last year. It’s set in West Virginia whose license plates proclaim: “Wild, wonderful.” Author Kay Chronister's tale is wild;  you can judge whether it's wonderful. I guarantee, though, that it's unlike anything you've read lately.

 

There remain pockets of Appalachia where time has stood still. In the early 20th century, folklorists combed the hills for ballads, customs, and vernacular speech in such places. Speaking of customs, the Haddesley family takes the cake for uniqueness. As we meet them in the not-so-distant past, the family consists of a dying father, sons Charlie and Percy, and daughters Eda, Wenna, and Nora. It is a patriarchal family that lives in the novel's namesake bog. In family lore, their ramshackle manor house has been owned by the h Haddesleys since a royal ancestor came to America and built it.

 

Lots of people go to Ancestry.com in search of august relatives–much of which is of dubious authenticity–but the Haddesleys are anomalous.  Their origins are supposedly contained in a book written in old French that none can read, though the patriarch is the keeper of oral lore. The bog has allegedly always provided what the family needs except for a few things the patriarch buys in a nearby town. They keep a few scrawny animals but rely on gardens and harvested bog bounty. Rituals are needed for the bog to sustain the Haddesleys.

 

Not weirded out yet? When the patriarch’s death is imminent, it’s the eldest son’s duty to administer a slow poison, place the dying body in the bog and wait for the sphagnum moss and algae to grow over him. From this will emerge a bog wife for the eldest son/new patriarch who digs her from the bog and vitiates her by spitting into her mouth. At least that's what the family believes the big black book says. Only Nora has much world experience, which she acquired by running off to Chicago, but did not acquire any old French! She is skeptical of family legends, though she returns to help the family perform their father's death ritual.

 

Wenna is also a symbol of how the bog has withdrawn its blessings–weeds have choked it, Wenna’s flight might be a curse, and a tree fell upon the room where slovenly Charlie slept and crushed the family jewels. Before he was placed in the bog, papa Haddesley told Percy that Charlie is a fool incapable of taking over and asked Percy to kill his brother. Everyone has issues that threaten to break the pact between the family and the bog. Oldest daughter Eda is a whiner who thinks she does all the work, Wenna doesn’t want to be there, and Nora, the youngest is naïve and willing to do anything to keep the family together. (Call Nora’s attempts unusual and distressing.) Meek Percy becomes a mystic survivalist, their inheritance money is nearly gone, and they are forced to sell items in the house that are old but don't yield a lot of money.

 

It is easy for us to identify a way of life in decline with five inept people adrift in a world that has passed them by. They are so isolated that many locals assume the manor is empty and consider it haunted. In a way, they are right; a few more crises and the withering House of Vegetation will fall down. The novel turns in ways that could be imaginary or perhaps magical. Stir in a visitation, a few revelations, and it spells change or perish.

 

It's never entirely clear what Chronister wants us to take away from all of this. For me,  the book is a metaphor for the clash between traditionalism and modernity with the Haddesleys representing a decaying pioneer spirit versus the encroaching outside world, the veritable serpent in the bog. Chronister never romanticizes life in the decaying manor house and played out bog, nor does she juxtapose modern life as a new Eden.

 

Disclaimer: My take could be nuts! The Bog Wife could be read as an environmental novel, or just an odd story populated by eccentrics. One blurb mentions “honoring family commitments and the drive to strike out on one's own... a haunting evocation of the arcane power of the habits and habitats that bind us.” That doesn't really help! Whatever you conclude, I suspect this book will stick with you like bog mud.

 

Rob Weir