The Bog Wife

For generations, the Haddesley family has kept a grim covenant with the cranberry bog behind their crumbling West Virginia manor: when the patriarch dies, they feed his body to the bog, and the bog gives back a "bog-wife" to marry the eldest son and carry the line forward. But when the five Haddesley siblings surrender their dying father to the mud and no wife rises to take her place, the compact that has defined — and confined — them begins to rot, along with everything they believed about their mother, the last bog-wife the land ever gave. A Southern Gothic novel about inheritance, family myth, and the cost of breaking faith with the land.