It is 1955, and the three Fayette sisters have lived their whole lives in the enchanting French Quarter of New Orleans. Though neglected by their parents, they share a close bond with one another--from afternoons in their small, shared bedroom, to trying to speak with ghosts beneath the sweeping trees in their garden. When the middle sister Constance disappears, the family believes she has run away, as she has done before; it is only the youngest--thirteen-year-old Bonavere (known as Bonnie)--who suspects there is more to it. Met only with grief from her family and resistance from the police, Bonnie embarks on a journey to bring her sister home, venturing through fabled Red Honey Swamp, and the city's vibrant and brutal history. Unravelling the layers of her sister's secret life, Bonnie discovers a pattern of girls found half-mad in the Louisiana swampland, and a connection to the wealthy, notorious Lasalle family. To rescue her sister, she must confront the realities of true violence, and the very nature of insanity.
As the evening crept on, I looked up to find Fritzi with her forehead low against her fingertips. She was standing in the one spot untouched by the marmalade light of our lamp, and the night collected over her like an overhanging shade. “I shouldn't have let her run off in a huff like that.”
“She'll be back soon, it's almost bedtime,” I said. “She'll want to be home before Mama sees and throws a fit.”
Caitlin Galway’s Bonavere Howl is Bayou Gothic, filled with beautiful and atmospheric writing.
Alix Hawley, author of All True Not A Lie In It, Giller-longlisted and Amazon.ca First Novel Award book
In true Southern Gothic tradition, Caitlin Galway manages to both unnerve and enchant, cloaking the reader in the perilous sticky heat of the Bayou. This gorgeously layered tale, the story of two mesmeric sisters – one who disappears, and the brave, audacious Bonnie who goes in search of her – haunted me for days.
Carolyn Smart, author of Hooked
Sisters, folklore, violence, and madness in 1950s New Orleans. Meticulously researched and capriciously imagined, Caitlin Galway has created an entire world for Bonavere and her sisters.
Cathy Marie Buchanan, New York Times bestselling author of The Painted Girls
Caitlin Galway’s Bonavere Howl is an astonishing debut novel. This story’s lush world, hung with Spanish moss, and “gingery doo-wop” pulsing through ghostly spaces, will hook you. The sheer layered sensuousness of Galway’s story, with its “hanging lilac,” “fresh skeins of lemon-scented geraniums,” and “milky Louisiana iris” will draw you in and make it difficult to put down this book’s haunted swamp-world of family secrets. Galway is an extraordinary writer. What other author could describe a freckle as “a keyhole into the thoughts she kept closed off” – and that’s just the beginning. Gothic deep south, in the hands of a poet. Totally gorgeous.
Jeanette Lynes, author of The Factory Voice (which was long-listed for the Giller) and The Small Things that End the World