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THE HAUNTING OF KINNAWE HOUSE is a ghost story that spans two eras in American history. As the novel opens, 27-year-old Matthew Rollins, an aspiring pop singer, is watching his dreams rapidly swirling down the drain. His girlfriend has dumped him, and he’s suffering with terrible insomnia that is affecting his brain and his eyesight.
Then comes the email from a real-estate agent at York Village Realtors, offering information about Kinnawe House. This former preacher’s house, built in 1746, is now available for rent for the first time in its history. The offer is too good to refuse, so Matthew sublets his Hell’s Kitchen apartment and heads north to Agamenticus, Maine, where he expects to exorcise his demons, write songs, and get some much-needed sleep.
Matthew does not know of the connection between Kinnawe House and the Reverend Jonathan Edwards, who terrified the American colonies with his 1741 sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” For years, Edwards’ former lover, has threatened to reveal her child, Parthalán, as Edwards’ illegitimate son. When four hardy men from the reverend’s Northampton, Massachusetts, community ask Edwards to sponsor a new congregation on the rugged Maine frontier, Edwards sees the opportunity to rid his house of his blackmailer and the child who is a living reminder of his hypocrisy.
Edwards has reason to believe that Parthalán has chosen to study the dark arts, but he does not suspect Parthalán’s plan to build Cape Agamenticus, Maine, into a prosperous oceanside town that Reverend Edwards, and all God-fearing people of the colonies, would consider an abomination.
The narrative alternates chapters between the present, as Matthew struggles with failing health and increasingly violent delusions and hallucinations, and the past, as Parthalán populates his town, and his church, with a community willing to sell their souls for hearty meals and comfortable homes—until a mysterious family arrives to foment rebellion from within. Past and present come together as Matthew learns, little by little, of his family’s ties to Cape Agamenticus and Kinnawe House—and why Parthalán will not rest until the house has driven Matthew to take his own life.
Part contemporary horror story and part historical novel, THE HAUNTING OF KINNAWE HOUSE traces the destruction wrought by one man over hundreds of years and multiple generations. It also tells the story of a haunted young man who learns that, at his weakest, he is also at his strongest. It will appeal to those who love classic haunted-house stories such as Richard Matheson’s HELL HOUSE, Stephen King’s THE SHINING, Sarah Waters’ THE LITTLE STRANGER, and Shirley Jackson’s THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE.