Who knew there was a Southern Gothic mystery novelist hiding up here in Toronto? Caitlin Galway’s novel is splashed with bayou water and laden with New Orleans scenes … Galway is a dab hand at Southern dialogue, too. This is a writer to watch.

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.

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.

The language of this Southern Gothic mystery is swamp-sticky and poetic. Galway’s writing is image-filled to the brim, rife with similes that are striking and evocative in their precision … Galway’s prose plays out as a battle between the mental fogs of grief and exhaustion and the urgent logic needed to solve a puzzle of life-or-death. … Galway’s mystery is not devoid of a lesson that engaging in spiritual practices that are not your own, without due care or knowledge, is not only violent in its colonial implications, but dangerous for those who do so … an engrossing read, and a strong debut.

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.

Caitlin Galway’s Bonavere Howl is Bayou Gothic, filled with beautiful and atmospheric writing.