The Bewitching

“Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches”: That was how Nana Alba always began the stories she told her great-granddaughter Minerva – stories that have stayed with Minerva all her life. Perhaps that’s why Minerva became a grad student focused on the history of horror literature; she’s now researching the life of Beatrice Tremblay, an obscure author of macabre tales.In the course of assembling her thesis, Minerva uncovers information that reveals that Tremblay’s most famous novel, The Vanishing, was inspired by a true story – Tremblay attended the same school as Minerva decades before, during the Great Depression, and became obsessed with her beautiful and otherworldly roommate, who then disappeared under mysterious circumstances.As Minerva descends ever deeper into Tremblay’s manuscript, she begins to sense that the same malign force that stalked Tremblay and the missing girl might still walk the halls of the campus. These eerie events also echo the stories her great-grandmother told her about her own girlhood in 1900s Mexico, in which she had a terrifying encounter with a witch.Minerva suspects that the same shadow that darkened her great-grandmother’s and Tremblay’s lives is now threatening her in 1990s Massachusetts. An academic career can be a punishing pursuit, but it might turn outright deadly when witchcraft is involved.