The Toll

Starred review from March 25, 2019
Priest (The Family Plot) spins a small, swampy urban legend into a riveting, swelteringly atmospheric story that questions just how far the residents of a Southern town will go to forget, or appease, a past they cannot bear to confront. Cameron Spratford has lived with his elderly cousins Claire and Daisy in Staywater, Ga., since his parents abandoned him there as a toddler. Although everyone in Staywater encourages Cam to leave, he is content to remain—until Titus Bell arrives. Titus and his wife, Melanie, are traveling through the Okefenokee Swamp when they arrive at a strange, one-lane bridge. Sometime later, Titus wakes up in the middle of the road, alone. He makes his way to Staywater and, while awaiting news of Melanie, begins to shake the secrets of the town loose. Cameron gradually discovers the truth about the bridge outside Staywater, the role Claire and Daisy played in bringing peace there once, and what they are willing to do to keep Cameron safe. Priest keeps the supernatural elements grounded by developing nuanced characters who feel as though they could walk off the page. Moody and mysterious, this gothic tale touches the heart even as it wraps chilly fingers around the spine. Agent: Jennifer Jackson, Donald Maass Literary.

June 1, 2019
Every thirteen years, someone in Staywater, Georgia disappears. Sometimes huge groups of people would be mysteriously swallowed up by the Okefenokee Swamp, and locals chalked it up to flash floods. Some even whispered about a serial killer. Cousins Daisy and Claire, though, knew there was a creature in the swamp that fed off the souls of the living, and in 1966 they did something about it. They lured the supernatural beast out of the swamp and killed it?but that wasn't enough to keep its ghost from feeding. In the present day, a tourist disappears, and the missing woman's husband begins digging for answers, slowly unfolding the mystery of Staywater as he talks to locals. Daisy and Claire are too old to fight, but they arm him with what they know and he sets off for the swamp to save his wife. Priest (The Family Plot, 2016) takes readers on a truly unsettling gothic journey through a rural town haunted by ghosts and secrets, leaving readers suspicious of every character along the way.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)