The 13th Child

Deep in the southern reaches of New Jersey, a state known for urban and suburban sprawl is a place like no other. The Pine Barrens. It is a place of brilliant summers amid green forest, lush bogs, and slow rivers of red-stained cedar water. Gray winters of damp cold. Peaceful, secluded towns and villages with strange sounding names; Batsto, Ong’s Hat, Double Trouble, darkened by legends of terror. For over two hundred years, the people of the Pine Barrens have talked of the 13th child in wonder and fear. Some say he is simply a folktale – a legend created to frighten children on cold winter nights or to keep older folks walking the straight and narrow. Others swear he is a terrifying nature spirit returning again and again to protect the forest from those who exploit it out of greed. And to those who have seen him, he is all too darkly, horrifyingly real.This is a novel of horror that follows the legendary Leeds Devil from his birth in 1733 to a harried Quaker woman with too many mouths to feed to the infamous mass sightings of 1909 and on to modern times and a run in with a group searching for Bigfoot. It is a story told from many viewpoints of the family and people he affected and that of the inter-dimensional spirit creature himself, a tragic character in his own right forever in search of acceptance and the peace that comes with it.

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