My friend Susan and I were tooling through a yarn crawl in Asheville, North Carolina, and came across a library book sale.

ZIP – I was in the doors almost as fast as Susan. They had a cart of free books you could just take, and on it sat Mott’s The Returned. I watched a French television series about Revenants a couple of years ago during a crocheting jag, and sort of liked it. It was half intellectual “what if,” half horror. I’m not a big fan of horror, but those what ifs will hook me every time.

I wondered if it were the one from which the series was made, and in fact the author blurb in back said it was being made into a series. So I took it to compare the French (and later a really crappy American series) to the book.

Would it surprise you to know the book is much better? Also, that the French series was based on a novel of the same name, much more horror-esque, by Seth Patrick. Stephen King once said about really good fantasy writing, “You don’t have to answer all the questions. You have to tell the story.” More or less. And that’s why I like Mott’s book better. He’s not trying to scare you or shock you. He just wonders, what if?

What if your dead loved ones, or unloved ones, returned, not flesh eating or hell bringing, just walked back in and sat down to dinner and said, “Why is everyone else older? Where have I been?”

It’s an interesting book because it follows one family whose little boy drowned, but intersperses it with one-chapter vignettes of other Returneds. Like The Grapes of Wrath with the Joads and the rest.

The book is really slow getting started. About 1/3 is set-up, 1/3 is build-up and then 1/3 takes the action back down. Slowly. For a “thriller” it’s gentle.

I loved it. The writing is very poetic, casual, calm. The subject matter is weird. The conclusions are startling. And it hooks you right from the first page.

Who could ask for more from a ghost story that is pretty much literature?