Something isn’t quite right in the Val.
Richard Franklin has left his Midwestern roots behind to live on the coast of Maine with his family. But in the autumn of the year 2000, he must return to his Illinois birthplace on a sorrowful journey. His wife Michelle has been killed in New England by a hit-and-run driver who is never found, so back home he comes with her cremated remains, to fulfill a final wish and on her birthday scatter her ashes in the park along the river in Blackwater Valley—simply Blackwater Val to locals—the small town where they both grew up and fell in love.
With him he brings his six-year-old daughter Katie who still grieves for her lost mother: Katie, who can sometimes guess who’s going to be on the phone before it rings. Who can stop all the clocks in the house, and break up clouds in the sky with her mind, and heal sicknesses, and who sometimes sees things that aren’t there . . . people who are no longer alive. All gifts she inherited from her mother.
Only something isn’t quite right in the Val.
Sinkholes are opening up, revealing the plague pits the sleepy hamlet was built over in the 1830s, when malaria and cholera outbreaks ran riot. Mysterious bird and fish die-offs begin to occur, and Katie can see ghosts of the dead gathering all around. But what she can’t see is the charred, centuries-old malevolence which has been waiting for her, and wants her for its very own. Or the pale Sallow Man who haunts the town’s nighttime streets . . . or the river witch—another Blackwater Val, of sorts—each of whom will be drawn one by one into the nightmarish bloodletting about to take place.
About the Author
William Gorman grew up listening to macabre stories and dark fantastical yarns from his grandfather, a magician and former ‘mentalist’ during the last great, fading days of vaudeville, told to him in porch shadows on warm Illinois summer eves. His first book, GHOST WHISPERS, was published in 2005 and spawned the immensely popular Haunted Rockford tours and cemetery walks now operating in my hometown. In 2016 my debut novel, a supernatural suspense thriller titled BLACKWATER VAL, was be released by award-winning Crystal Lake Publishing, with a collection of my short fiction to follow at some point after that. The magician may be gone, but the stories remain.
In his spare time he hangs around with German shepherds and listens to classic rock & roll. Sometimes he searches for out-of-the-way bookshops and old magic museums and he linger theres, waiting for Neil Gaiman to materialize from out of the dust.
Blackwater Val Review
Rating: 
(5/5)
Blackwater Val is a fantastic novel written by William Gorman. We just cant put this book down. We definitely recommend this book to any horror fan. Hope he has some more up his sleeve.
Click here to buy this awesome book
Categorised in: Horror Books
This post was written by Nadia Vella