It’s some pretty good magic that can make words on a page provoke very real emotions. But it’s just as easy for that fragile suspension of disbelief to be shattered and remind us we’ve got dishes to wash or laundry to fold or to simply decide that scrolling on Reddit seems more compelling at the moment. Luckily, Leslie J. Anderson spins a pretty good spell with her debut novel, The Unmothers.
Marshall is beyond apathetic about the story her editor’s sent her out to the middle of nowhere to cover—a healthy human baby ostensibly birthed by a horse. After losing her husband, and subsequently a pregnancy, Marshall can barely muster the drive to get out of bed, let alone untangle what is surely a cover story for some shameful teenage pregnancy. She’s not surprised when virtually no one in town wants to talk to her, but doesn’t expect that the one person who will talk to her is the young father himself. Marshall doesn’t even have time to scrape up enough information to placate her editor before she stumbles upon a bizarre murder of both a horse and a human.
A local drug addict is the obvious suspect, but the information isn’t adding up. The more Marshall learns about the murder, and the baby, and the whole insular town, the more she realizes something far stranger than even a horse supposedly giving birth to a human baby is happening right under her nose. And the deeper she gets, the harder it is to extricate herself from this charming small town and its secrets thick as the fog that gathers in these woods.
Reproductive horror as a very specific subgenre of the horror umbrella has been on the rise, and The Unmothers is a far more refreshing take than some discount Handmaid’s Tale. A run-of-the-mill pregnancy wholly wanted, with ample medical support, and without any complications is, after all, itself filled with enough body horror to make the strong-stomached cringe. Choice and childbirth take on more meanings than usual within the borders of this little town, and there’s more than one way to take care of a problem—even if none of the choices is exactly easy. There’s no way to keep from drawing parallels between this kind of topic and certain current events, but Anderson wisely shies away from any commentary beyond the plot. Her characters have far too much on their minds to come together for some Very Special Episode, anyway.
Most characters within The Unmothers grapple with some kind of emotional fracturing; what’s more interesting is seeing how each responds. Marshall’s weariness is palpable, not just for the story at hand or her career, but for her life as a whole. Grief has sapped her of all drive, and this fluff piece is no exception. It’s rewarding her get a little spark back, even if it is through bizarre and disturbing events. Meanwhile, the baby’s father, Ros, deals with his hardship by simply shoving his nose to the grindstone, concentrating so hard on his baby and horses that he doesn’t have to take stock of what’s happened. Ros’s ex-girlfriend, Emma, responds to her own grief through running as far as she can for as long as she can. The nice thing is that the creeping thing in the fog finds all flavors of grief delicious.
Most places, I suspect, have a silent set of rules beyond whatever’s in the law, but that kind of stereotype tends to be especially present in stories about small towns. The Unmothers is no exception, though it does rein in the off-the-books stuff to believable enough bounds that it didn’t strain the imagination. This was also true of Marshall’s growing obsession with discovering the secrets swirling around her as part of her expression of and healing from grief rather than some dogged obsession that leads to committing several crimes in service of a headline. And while some plot points could have had a little more definition, the allusion is strong enough to go without.
This is all to say that Anderson has done her job right: laying out a story, crafting a world and populating it, and laying down just enough breadcrumbs for us to follow without distraction. The result is a book that sometimes punches you in the gut but at least has the decency to look you in the eyes while it does.
Ring Reads 