I have a Halloween post up over at Hillbilly Highways, a rerun of my original post on Luke Bauserman’s spooky soul selling story Some Dark Holler. Very Manly Wade Wellman. Very good.
For Halloween I’m returning to the motif of selling your soul.
Bauserman pitched an advanced copy of Some Dark Holler to me because I reviewed a collection of Manly Wade Wellman’s Silver John stories. I get a lot of these, usually with the author comparing their work to some colossus in the field. But I couldn’t resist, being a huge fan of both country noir and speculative fiction. I didn’t remotely expect Bauserman’s work to live up to that of Wellman, a master unequaled today in my eyes. Does Bauserman’s work live up to Wellman’s? I can hardly believe I’m writing this, but it very well may exceed it.
Some Dark Holler opens at the close of the Civil War. Death arrives at a meeting with Scratch (the Devil) and two of Scratch’s lackeys. A deal with the Devil will protect you from death for seven years. In return…
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