Summary:
“It’s been four years in prison since Jade Daniels last saw her hometown of Proofrock, Idaho, the day she took the fall, protecting her friend Letha and her family from incrimination. Since then, her reputation, and the town, have changed dramatically. There’s a lot of unfinished business in Proofrock, from serial killer cultists to the rich trying to buy Western authenticity. But there’s one aspect of Proofrock no one wants to confront…until Jade comes back to town. The curse of the Lake Witch is waiting, and now is the time for the final stand.
New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones has crafted an epic horror trilogy of generational trauma from the Indigenous to the townies rooted in the mountains of Idaho. It is a story of the American west written in blood.”
Overview:
How many times can killers beset a small town? How many times can the same heroine rise to the occasion and thwart the relentless evil that attacks with brutality in seemingly inexhaustive supply? If one were to take Stephen Graham Jones’s Indian Lake Trilogy at face value, they might say, “three.” But once they’ve read the whole tale—the one that begins with My Heart is a Chainsaw, hurtles through Don’t Fear the Reaper, and concludes with The Angel of Indian Lake—they will know the number is much, much higher. Jones and his reluctant protagonist, Jennifer “Jade” Daniels, return to Proofrock four years after the events of Reaper and eight years since everything began with Chainsaw. And right on schedule, things go increasingly wrong. In true trilogy fashion, Jones takes the reader off the rails following and subverting the rules of the genre, particularly those listed by Randy in the second and third installments of the Scream franchise. Higher body count? Check. More elaborate deaths? Check. Superhuman killer? Anyone can die? The past will come back? Well . . . you’ll just have to pick up the book to find out.
Thoughts:
It is possible to consider The Angel of Indian Lake outside of the trilogy Jones has penned, but it wouldn’t be complete. These books can stand alone (I think), but that doesn’t mean that they should. Jade’s story doesn’t end with any one of these books. It doesn’t begin with any of them either. It may seem unbelievable, at the very least fantastical, that so much would happen to one town and one girl/woman in particular. But Kurt Vonnegut once said of protagonists, “. . . make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.” It may not take all three installments of the trilogy for us to see what Jennifer “Jade” Daniels is made of, but it does take the events of all three books for Jade to see what she is made of. And that is at the heart of any good story—growth and self-realization. It may have taken an unimaginable series of tragedies and more than a few buckets of gore to get her here, but in the end, Jade knows who she is and what she is and she is no longer searching for the next final girl.
Look for the first two installments of the Indian Lake Trilogy at Town Hall Library!
