Mr. Splitfoot

A contemporary gothic from an author in the company of Kelly Link and Aimee Bender, Mr. Splitfoot tracks two women in two times as they march toward a mysterious reckoning. Ruth and Nat are orphans, packed into a house full of abandoned children run by a religious fanatic. To entertain their siblings, they channel the dead. Decades later, Ruth’s niece, Cora, finds herself accidentally pregnant. After years of absence, Aunt Ruth appears, mute and full of intention. She is on a mysterious mission, leading Cora on an odyssey across the entire state of New York on foot. Where is Ruth taking them? Where has she been? And who — or what — has she hidden in the woods at the end of the road?   In an ingeniously structured dual narrative, two separate timelines move toward the same point of crisis. Their merging will upend and reinvent the whole. A subversive ghost story that is carefully plotted and elegantly constructed, Mr. Splitfoot will set your heart racing and your brain churning. Mysteries abound, criminals roam free, utopian communities show their age, the mundane world intrudes on the supernatural and vice versa.   Making good on the extraordinary acclaim for her previous books, Samantha Hunt continues to be “dazzling” (Vanity Fair) and to deliver fiction that is “daring and delicious” (Chicago Tribune).

From School Library Journal

At 17, orphans Ruth and Nat are on the brink of aging out of the religious cult they live in. Nat, who claims to talk with the dead, shares his visions with the other children, while Ruth helps him set the stage. When con man Mr. Bell comes to the home, he discovers in them a perfect scam, and he recruits them to join him in his travels. Years later, Ruth arrives at her sister's home and entices her niece Cora to join her on a walking journey. Cora, practical, hardworking, pregnant by a married man, is unconnected to her own life and willingly goes with Ruth. The walking is hard, but Cora is fascinated by her silent aunt and is certain that Ruth is taking her somewhere important. In alternating chapters, readers follow teenage Ruth and Nat as they travel, while Cora and Ruth's present-day walking journey bridges the past into a ghostly present that provides a way for Cora to connect not only with Nat but with the baby who is inching its way into her life. It is perplexing why Cora follows the silent Ruth, but Ruth's story demands to be told, and Hunt delivers it in a prose style that dwells within another realm, allowing disbelief to be easily suspended. Much like Cora, who blindly follows Ruth into the wilds beyond her home, readers will wonder where they are going and by joining the protagonists' journey will discover that what they imagine they know about someone is often quite different from the reality. VERDICT Hunt's lyrical writing and compelling tale are perfect for well-read teens.—Connie Williams, Petaluma High School, CA

Gregory Maguire, New York Times Book Review

“Samantha Hunt’s third novel, MR. SPLITFOOT, will haunt me...I’ve dog-eared so many pages in honor of vivid prose that my advance reader’s copy of MR. SPLITFOOT curls up with fattened corners...the novel moves not just in two time frames, told through two voices, a first-person narrator and a third-, but also…it moves in the fourth dimension, stamping itself upon the reading mind. Hypnotic and glowing, MR. SPLITFOOT insists on its own ghostly presence.”

Washington Post

"The historical and the fantastical entwine like snakes in Samantha Hunt’s fiction...Turned around and around in these woods, you won’t always know where you are, but there’s a rare pleasure in this blend of romance and phantoms."

New Yorker

"This gripping novel alternates between two story lines: in one, the budding con artists Nat and Ruth struggle to survive in an abusive Christian foster home; in the other, set some years in the future, Ruth, inexplicably rendered mute, leads her niece, Cora, on a journey across New York State on foot. The narratives, which twist together into a shocking dénouement, are marked by ghost stories, from Nat and Ruth’s forays into the world of mediums and séances to Cora’s struggle to piece together her aunt’s past. 'History holds up one side of our lives and fiction the other,' one character tells Cora, and the novel’s pleasures lie in the intersections between the two."

Vulture, "7 Books You Need to Read This January"

"The ghosts of industrial America haunt the author’s picaresque third novel alongside the maybe-supernatural kind. Deep in upstate New York, two orphaned teens break free of the shady Love of Christ! foster home and make a business of claiming to channel the dead; years later, one of them, Ruth, turns up mute and gaunt at the home of her pregnant niece and draws her into a mysterious march along the Erie Canal. The two narratives alternate suspensefully, building a world of hidden forces and untethered souls that feels like the dystopia we already live in."

The Boston Globe

“Mr. Splitfoot [is] at once an intriguing mystery with clues, suspense, enigmas galore, and an exhilarating, witty, poignant paean to the unexplainable, the unsolvable, the irreducibly mysterious...[Hunt's] epistemological and ethical rigor are complemented by a lovely respect for what remains uncategorizable, unable to be mastered or explained away."

Esquire, "The 25 Best Books of 2016 (So Far)"

"If you're looking for one of those books that's an escapist adventure, a gothic page-turner that is also so finely crafted that you'll feel enriched as well as transported for having read it, try Mr.Splitfoot. The novel features two intertwining storylines, beginning with the education of two orphans who learn to interact with the dead, and relocating decades later when one of those orphans comes to find her niece and bring her on a mysterious journey. Samantha Hunt's prose sparkles whether she's writing about the most mystical of moments deep in a seance, or the more mundane times when niece and aunt stay slog through upstate New York as they set out for who-knows-where. The way the narratives ultimately come together is unsettling yet satisfying that the novel practically begs to be called 'haunting.'"

literal and metaphorical

"Turn to any page of this one-of-a-kind Gothic fiction about motherhood and hauntings

Wall Street Journal, "Six Books to Curl Up With This Winter"

"Zombies are out, ghosts are in. [Hunt] taps into the cultural zeitgeist with a new novel blurring the natural and supernatural."

The Paris Review, Staff Pick

"The way I feel about Samantha Hunt’s Mr. Splitfoot is how one of its characters describes meeting his wife: 'We fell in love in a bloody way, thorns and hooks'...Ruth’s and Cora’s experiences of that landscape are like hallucinatory expeditions through a gothic wasteland. Somewhere along the way, Hunt conned me into believing that temporary possession by a hellish demon isn’t, after all, so different from the crucible of motherhood."

Francine Prose in the New York Times

"I started the recent novel Mr. Splitfoot, by Samantha Hunt, and there I was. Lost. The 'real world' seemed only marginally more real than the scary religious cult in upstate New York, where the novel is partly set. Though it wasn’t a pleasant place, I was thrilled to be somewhere I would never, in real life, want to be."

TimeOut New York, "15 Best Books of 2016"

"Creepy, disquieting and unsettling, this book grabs the reader right away."

Financial Times

"Hunt mixes her gothic ingredients with great skill, and throws in some quirky contemporary twists for good measure...The result is a riveting, linguistically playful tale about demons (real or imagined), loss, magic and motherhood."

The Millions, "Most Anticipated: The Great 2016 Book Preview"

"Hunt’s back with a modern gothic starring a scam-artist orphan who claims to talk to the dead; his sister who ages into a strange, silent woman; and, later, her pregnant niece, who follows her aunt on a trek across New York without exactly knowing why. Also featured: meteorites, a runaway nun, a noseless man, and a healthy dash of humor. Although it’s still too early to speculate on the prize-winning potential of Mr. Splitfoot, Hunt’s fantastical writing is already drawing favorable comparisons to Kelly Link and Aimee Bender, and her elegantly structured novel promises to be the year’s most unusual ghost story."

Bustle, "17 Of 2016’s Most Anticipated Books To Put On Your Wishlist Immediately"

"Mr. Splitfoot is going to be a wild ride. If you're all about magical realists like Kelly Link, this is one title you'll need to pick up, because Samantha Hunt's third novel takes the banal and rockets it into the fantastic (and the fantastically wonderful). I don't want to divulge too much about this one because I'd rather you read it yourself, but I will say that if you love dual narrative structures or complicated timelines, this is an especially good pick for your must-read list."

Paste Magazine

"Spooky and unnerving...Part gothic spine-chiller, part bleak, backwoods road novel, Mr. Splitfoot ranges all over the modern-day Burned-over District...Cora’s journey with Ruth is confounding, rich in backwoods weirdness, spooky and strange and artfully intertwined with the slowly unwinding story of Ruth and Nat’s earlier adventures...[Mr. Splitfoot] exhume[s] the carnival of millenarianism and inter-realm interaction that swept the region two centuries ago, resurrecting it in a tale both strange and terrifying on the same scorched earth where evangelical fire once burned."

mixing modern and gothic, and blurring the line between the living and the dead...Even if the supernatural is not your cup of tea, the frenetic style of Mr. Splitfoot will sweep you up in the book's wildly unraveling reality."

"Mr. Splitfoot is an eerie and electrifying read

Philadelphia Inquirer

"It's a sure bet both of Hunt's narratives - one fast, one slow; each propelled by tight, tense sentences - will converge in space, if not in time, but how she makes it happen is as satisfying as it is unpredictable. Mr. Splitfoot is a horror story of sorts, but Hunt is careful not to summon anything supernatural in the daylight. 'Every story is a ghost story,' we're told more than once. A hint? A red herring? Hard to say."

Huffington Post, "5 Hot Books"

"The natural and supernatural quickly blur, as characters like Captain Ahab and Huck Finn pop up in this suspenseful, wryly witty novel.”

Refinery 29, "5 Terrific New Books To Read This January"

"Fans of the wondrous and strange will find solace in Samantha Hunt’s haunting novel...Hunt's narrative drips in magical realism, so you’ll have to roll with the whimsy and supernatural elements, including Nat’s charming ability to communicate with mischievous ghosts."

The Dallas Morning News

"[A] quirky, mysterious novel...Hunt has conjured an unusual and engaging story...Hunt’s aim is not to be believable, but to play with the unanswerable questions and mysteries that underlie life. The emotional connections between Hunt’s key characters are authentic, as is the unusual world she creates at Love of Christ!, and her writing is lively and funny. At times it felt like both Cora and I were on a wild goose chase, trailing Ruth wherever she went, but I gladly followed, eager to reach the surprising conclusion of this enigmatic journey."

Miami Herald

“Hunt maintains a dark and disturbing atmosphere throughout this intriguing, well-drawn gothic, creating a terrain that’s familiar and yet alien and unnerving at the same time…If all stories are ghost stories, if our pasts do haunt us, maybe they can save us, too.”

Chicago Tribune

"An American Gothic fever dream...Hunt's packed prose writhes with hallucinatory detail. At her best, she lurches from lyricism to cynicism in short, declarative sentences."

San Diego Book Review

"[Mr. Splitfoot] conjures ghosts with startling prose and enough hope to sway even the most hardened of nonbelievers."

The Globe and Mail

“The devil unquestionably stalks these pages, but so do more benevolent spirits, and the novel ends, unexpectedly, on a note of uplift and hope. An episodic picaresque that is undeniably strange and often intriguing.”

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Mr. Splitfoot has the offbeat charm of Scarlett Thomas’ work, while the theme of communing with the dead inevitably brings Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black and Sarah Waters’ Affinity […] to mind… Its vision of unexpected love and loyalty remains compelling.”

Andi Miller, BookRiot, "The Best Books Of 2016, So Far"

"Love dark, creepy, gothic books about orphans in group homes speaking to the dead, mysterious strangers, arduous journeys, cults, and homicidal maniacs? Who doesn’t? While I am notoriously grumpy when it comes to dual storylines, the two threads in this book, separated by time and place, were so artfully woven together and linked by such mysterious and sympathetic characters, I was hanging out on the edge of my seat anticipating what would become of them. As the plots began to converge, I was absolutely addicted. This could’ve easily been a one-sitting book."

BookPage

“You’ll want to savor every fiendish bit of this book. With her latest novel, Samantha Hunt has delivered a gothic tale that’s both deliciously creepy and emotionally satisfying, combining supernatural intrigue and thematic weight…Hunt’s confidence in her story propels the book from page one, a task made all the more impressive when you consider the murky waters it traverses. Mr. Splitfoot is about the divide between the natural and the supernatural, between faith and reason, and in the hands of a storyteller like Hunt…the novel becomes something truly special. If you’re a lover of rule-breaking ghost stories, spoiler alert: Mr. Splitfoot is for you.”

BookBrowse

“This deeply inventive Gothic story is about two women with a shared past and a mysterious future…Part ghost story, part love story, part modern gothic horror, Mr. Splitfoot is an original, vivid and compelling work of literary fiction…A rewarding journey.”

Kirkus Reviews, starred

"A truly fantastic novel in which the blurring of natural and supernatural creates a stirring, visceral conclusion."

beautiful ones, fraught ones; humans with tremendous flaws. (No one but perhaps Flannery O'Connor has pegged the grotesque rage underlying religious fundamentalism this well.) An exuberant writer, Hunt furnishes every millimeter of her story with life, with palpable losses, longing, desire, tenderness, and even the trappings of pop culture. If you're craving the tangy prose and warm sweep of a really well-wrought novel, you'll find it here...But it's the liberties Hunt takes that make this novel levitate into something wholly remarkable and new. She's such a powerful writer that she naturally reaches beyond the usual canonized frame of what's real...Delve into this tightly crafted book. And then: sweet dreams."

"An entrancing, modern, haunted tale...[Mr. Splitfoot] belongs in the welcome genre of books by new writers who don't accept the confines of modern literary fiction's terse and limited geometry, its focus on flawed human relationships and their legacy. Yes, these are humans; yes, there are relationships

BookRiot,"15 Books Out in 2016 You Should Mark Down Now: Fiction Edition"

"The author of the wonderful Tesla novel, The Invention of Everything Else, is back with a contemporary gothic about orphan children who can channel the dead, a mysterious mission, and something hidden in the woods."

intensified by Hunt’s lucid imagery

“Hunt’s enchanting third novel adeptly obscures the line between earthly and the metaphysical. Decades after leaving her fundamentalist foster home, Ruth, now mute, encounters her pregnant niece, Cora. The two women embark on a twisted and otherworldly quest

New Zealand Herald

"[A] perfectly formed snow-globe of a novel the exists in it's own well-crafted universe that hangs together remarkably well no matter how hard you try to shake it up...Hunt is an excellent writer, with real talent for character development, dialogue and atmosphere. There are lots of story links to discover that span the 14-year-gap that separates the twin narratives - many of which will may only be uncovered upon a second reading. That perhaps is the magic of Mr Splitfoot - a novel whose real charms are only largely evident once you finish the final page."

Vanity Fair, "In Short"

"A supernatural road trip."

Charlotte Brontë, speaking through a medium

“I get the chills. Is it a true story? Is it a sad story? It’s what people want. It has a lot of good energy and people, people will like it. They will keep reading it until they read the end of it. It’s intriguing because a person will know there’s something two-sided. Yeah. It’s a good one.”

From the Inside Flap

Ruth and Nat are seventeen. They are orphans. And they are developing an uncanny ability to talk to the dead. These talents bring them into the orbit of Mr. Bell, a con man with his own mystical interests. Together they embark on an unexpected journey that connects meteor sites, utopian communities, lost mothers, and the scar that maps its way across Ruth s face. Decades later and after years of absence, Ruth visits her niece, Cora. But while Ruth used to speak to the dead, she now won t speak at all. It seems, though, that she has arrived just in time. Cora is in trouble single and pregnant and not sure what is in store for her. Aunt Ruth has a plan, even if she s not telling. Cora knows she must follow. Their journey becomes an odyssey. But where is Ruth taking them? Where has she been all these years? Why won t she talk? And who or what is hidden in the woods at the end of the road? A subversive ghost story that is as haunting in its examination of family, motherhood, and love as it is in its conjuring of the otherworldly, Mr. Splitfoot will set your heart racing and your imagination aflame. Unwinding in an ingenious structure, it tracks two women in two times as they march toward a mysterious, explosive reckoning. A contemporary gothic, it is a truly fantastic novel in which the blurring of natural and supernatural creates a stirring, visceral conclusion. * *Kirkus Reviews, starred review

From the Back Cover

Praise for Mr. Splitfoot Samantha Hunt is astonishing. Her every sentence electrifies. Her characters demand our closest attention. Her new book contains everything that I want in a novel. If I could long-distance mesmerize you, dear reader, into picking up this book and buying it and reading it at once, believe me: I would. Kelly Link I'm speechless. Mr. Splitfoot is so inventive, so new; I haven t read anything like it in years. On the surface it's about false spirituality and the most demented road trip across New York State ever attempted, but it s also about the horrible ties that bind us and the small acts of redemption that make life almost okay. On top of that, it s a thrilling page-turner. I couldn t stop reading it. Gary Shteyngart Mr. Splitfoot is lyrical, echoing, deeply strange, with a quality of sustained hallucination. It is the best book on communicating with the dead since William Lindsay Gresham s Nightmare Alley, but it swaps out that novel s cynicism for a more life-affirming sense of uncertainty. Luc Sante Mr. Splitfoot is an absolutely thrilling book. Filial and maternal love are on display in all their complicated hugeness. But Hunt gives us plenty of humor amid the horror and awe and then turns on the lights and shows us what was looming above us the whole time. I can't stop thinking about it. Sarah Manguso

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Far from here, there’s a church. Inside the church, there’s a box. Inside the box is Judas’s hand.” Nat is slight and striking as a birch branch. “Who cut it off?” Ruth asks. “How?” But Nat’s a preacher in a fever. His lesson continues with a new topic. “Baby deer have no scent when they are born.” Nat conducts the air. “Keeps those babies safe as long as their stinking mothers stay far away.” This is how Nat loves Ruth. He fills her head with his wisdom. “My mom doesn’t stink.” “You don’t even know who your mom is, Ru.” “Of course I do. She’s a veterinarian. She already had too many animals when I was born.” “I don’t believe you.” Ruth looks left, then right. “OK. She’s a bank robber. When you’re asleep, she brings me money.” “Where’s all the cash, then? Are you hiding it in some big cardboard box?” So Ruth swerves again, returning to the version of a mother she uses most often. “I mean my mom’s a bird, a red cardinal.” “A male? Your mom’s a boy?” “Yeah.” “No, she isn’t. She’s a stone. Bones. I spit on her.” Nat steals confidence from thin air. Ruth pulls her long dress tight across bent knees. She doesn’t even know enough about mothers to fabricate a good one. Her idea of a mother is like a non-dead person’s idea of heaven. It must be great. It must be huge. It must be better than what she’s got now. “I’m just saying, wherever she is, she doesn’t stink.” Nat flips the feathers of his hair. “Wherever she is. Exactly.” He holds his hand in a ray of sunlight. “I’m here now.” He lifts the hand that touched light up to her ear, squeezing the lobe, an odd, familiar affection between their bodies. Nat touches the scar on her face, tangled knots of tissue, keloids dots on her nose and cheeks. “Do you know how they deliver mail to the bottom of the Grand Canyon?” “No.” “I taught you this before. Please.” Nat is cruel or Nat is gentle. Nat hates/loves Ruth as much as he hates/loves himself. He’ll say, “Sleep on the floor tonight” or “I’m taking your blue coat. I like it” or “Stop crying right now.” But he’ll also say, “Eat this” and “You can dance, girl” and “Stay the fuck away from Ruth, or I’ll slice your ear cartilage off and give it to a dog to chew on.” When the Father raises a switch, Nat gives his back. “Are you just someone who wants to stay stupid?” “No. Tell me.” “Mules.” She wrinkles her nose. “Don’t believe me? You’re welcome to shop elsewhere.” “I believe you. You’re the only shop in town.” They are alone in Love of Christ!’s bright living room. They are happiest when they are alone together. “Tell me what you know about light.” “Not much.” “It’s the fastest thing in the world.” “Faster than Jesus?” “Way faster than Jesus.” Dust turns before her eyes. “OK. I believe you.” Nat looks right at her, smiles. “What killed Uncle Sam?” She imagines a forgotten relative, an inheritance, a home. “Who’s that?” “Samuel Wilson, the meatpacking man once called Uncle Sam. Symbol of our nation? He’s buried just down the road apiece. You didn’t even know Uncle Sam was dead.” “I didn’t know Uncle Sam was a real person. What killed him?” “Stupidity, girl. Stupidity.” His, she wonders, or mine?   Nothing is near here, upstate New York. The scope of the galaxy seems reasonable. Light, traveling ten thousand years to reach Earth, makes sense because from here even the city of Troy, three miles away, is as distant as Venus. What difference could ten thousand light years make? Nat and Ruth have never been to Manhattan. The Love of Christ! Foster Home, Farm, and Mission is a brick bear spotted with mange. Handiwork from days past? — ?ledge and brace doors, finger-joint chair rails, and hardwood floors? — ?is being terrorized by state-provided, institutional, indestructible furniture common to dormitories and religious organizations. The house’s wooden floors are smooth as a gun butt. In summer Drosophila melanogaster breed in the compost pile. Each snaggletooth of a homestead constructed during the Civil War pleases Father Arthur, lord of the domain, founder of Love of Christ! “Hand of the creator,” he says. Clapboards that keep out only some of the wind; sills that have slipped off square; splinters as long as fingers. The house is always cold with a useless hearth since the State frowns on foster home fireplaces. “Meddlers!” Father Arthur unleashed his rage against bureaucracy, using a sledge on the innocent, elderly chimney. Now once a day when the sun reaches alignment, a sliver of light shines into the house through the busted-up flue, a precise astronomical calendar if anyone knew how to read it. At Love of Christ! children feel the Lord, and the Lord is often furious and unpredictable, so Father Arthur cowers from corrupting influences. No Walt Disney, soda pop, or women’s slacks pass his threshold. The children milk goats, candle and collect eggs, preserve produce, and make yogurt from cultures they’ve kept alive for years. Blessed be the bacteria. The children remain ignorant of the bountiful mysteries filling the nearby Price Chopper. Boys at Love of Christ! wear black cotton pants and solid tops from a limited palette of white, tan, or brown. The girls wear plain dresses last seen on Little House on the Prairie reruns. Simple fabric, a few pale flowers, a modest length for working. Fingernails are clean and rounded. Teeth are scrubbed with baking soda. The old ways survive, and seasonal orders dictate. But? — ?like the olivine-bronzite chondrite meteor that surprised a Tomhannock Creek farmer back in 1863? — ?corruption has a way of breaking through. New charges arrive with words from the outside: mad cow disease, La-Z-Boy recliner, Barbie doll. “You know what Myst is?” Ruth asks Nat. “M.I.S.T. Yes. A secretive branch of the Marines. Surprised you’ve heard of it.” He works with more confidence than facts. “I thought it was a video game.” “Video game? What’s that?”   When they had mothers, Nat’s read him books and fed him vitamins until a bad man bit off the tip of her right breast and told her he’d be back for the left one. She didn’t stop driving until she reached New York State. She left Nat at a babysitter’s house, disappearing with a hero from the personal ads, a man who appreciated firm thighs more than tiny kids and perfect breasts. Nat set fire to his first group home. No one died. Ruth never knew her mom, but when she was young, her sister, Eleanor, lived at Love of Christ! El was like a mom. She petted Ruth at night, told Ruth she was beautiful despite the messed-up scar on her face. “When you were a baby,” El said, “you used to point at birds.” Then Eleanor turned eighteen. “Real sorry.” The Father woke them with a fist on the door. “Time to go.” El jumped up. Ruth froze cold. She was only five. El stalled her departure in the driveway, but Ruth didn’t appear. “Bye,” El spoke to the house. No sign of Ruth. No blood vow to find one another once El got settled. It would be a long time before El would be able to come for her, if El, an unemployed eighteen-year-old, would ever be able to come for her five-year-old sister. Ruth breathed into the window upstairs, looked down on the driveway scene, a surgery in some anatomy theater removing the only familiar thing she’d ever known. El was leaving in the truck. Ruth had no idea where it would take her. A bus station? The YWCA? Some mall parking lot in the capital with eighty bucks and a crucifix from the Father in her bag? Ruth pushed harder into the pane. A black thread, lashed around the chrome bumper, yanked an organ from Ruth’s chest, dragged it in the dirt behind the Father’s truck like a couple of gory beer cans. Ruth said nothing for two weeks. No one noticed. Eventually the State brought the Father a replacement, a boy named Nat who’d had trouble with matches and kerosene. The Word became flesh and lived among them. The Word became flesh and lived among them. “You can be my sister now,” Ruth told him. That was the Word.

About the Author

Samantha Hunt’s novel about Nikola Tesla, The Invention of Everything Else was a finalist for the Orange Prize and winner of the Bard Fiction Prize. Her first novel, The Seas, a twisted tale of mermaids, won the National Book Foundation’s Five under Thirty-five prize. She lives in upstate New York.

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