Gone to the Graveyard: Five Books for the Season
Photo: Susan Hoffman
It doesn’t have to be a special cemetery – any cemetery will do. Take a trip to the local cemetery at twilight and every shadow beckons and taunts. Creaky tree branches vocalize a cackle, wind whooshes around corners and gravel spits and echoes under your feet. Shivering yet?
Some of literature’s most frightening and intriguing roads are best traveled in cemeteries. Here are a few of our favorites.
Written as a book for young adults, this book has major appeal to adults as well. An 18-month old, orphaned by a murderer, toddles his way to the local graveyard where he is adopted by the ghostly residents. “Nobody Owens” grows up among a wise multi-generational cast of spirits who stand behind him as he adventures his way into his teen years.
Pet Sematary by Stephen King
Of course we had to include Stephen King books! This book, published in 1983, has made all of us wonder if we really should bury our pets. When Dr. Creed’s cat, Church, dies he buries him in the “real cemetery,” a place used in the past by a Native American tribe from the area. Church returns, alive, the next morning. Of course Church isn’t the only thing that gets buried there.
The third book in the Julie Collins PI mystery series starts with a mysterious hole in the ground. When bones show up, then disappear again, Julie steps in to find out if the missing bones were connected to a local missing person or an Indian buriel from many years before.
Set in Edwardian England during the time of women suffragist movement, this is the story of two girls whose families have cemetery plots next to each other. Despite their disputes over whose cemetery decor is more appropriate, the girls find friendship, great loss and peace in the cemetery while their mothers live the difficult lives of women of the era.
Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
In a London flat, sitting next to the famous Highgate Cemetery, twin nieces try to understand their aunt’s life and how it fell so far from their mother’s. The quirky characters alone make this a book worth savoring. Add in ghosts, paranormal activity and graveyard tours to a cup of hot tea and you’ll be one happy reader.
