The Winter People – A Page-Turning Supernatural Thriller

Jennifer McMahon’s chilling novel, The Winter People (2013) is set in the eerie small-town of West Hall, Vermont, surrounded by dark woods and a source of weird folk tales. The collective psyche of the town’s inhabitants believes in vengeful ghosts and unexplainable monsters roaming around the creepy atmosphere of forests. And like every small-town we read about in novels, strangers rarely trespass the territory while the townspeople pass of their knowledge and sense of dread to the dwindling populace of descendants. Of course, teenagers rebel and question the elders’ belief in such ridiculous fairy-tales. It leads to unveiling the truth, which only further leads to discerning the necessity of maintaining the dark secret. The Winter People follows this basic structure, a Stephen King-like story that alternates between the past and present to explore the town’s legend of ‘sleepers’.

“The first time I saw a sleeper, I was nine years old,” writes Sara in her diary, one of the grieving heroines of the novel. The ‘sleeper’ or ‘Winter People’, as named by Sara’s little daughter Gertie, are people who have been recalled from the dead by their beloved ones. And we inherently know nothing good can come from awakening the dead. Sara Harrison Shea’s story is set in the year 1908. She lives in her remote farmhouse (which belonged to her deceased father) with her husband Martin, and six-year-old daughter Gertie. Gertie was born after many years of failed pregnancies and loss. Sadly, the little girl too perishes in an accident and madness seems to have taken hold of Sara. In order to get her daughter back, Sara performs a ritual, the knowledge of it passed on to her by a mysterious aunt. Soon, she believes her girl has come back, whispering to her, and leaving strange notes.

In the present, Nineteen-year-old Ruthie wakes up one morning to find that her mother, Alice has disappeared. For years, Ruthie and her little sister Fawn are living off-the-grid with their mother. In her search for clues to find her mother’s whereabouts, Ruthie stumbles upon Sara Harrison Shea’s diary (actually it’s published into a book by Sara’s niece Amelia years after her aunt’s grim fate; people read it as a good horror story, although Amelia believed it to be true and adjudges that some of the diary’s ‘important’ pages are missing). Ruthie also comes across other mysterious items in her mom’s closet which pushes her to take a short trip with boyfriend Buzz. In a parallel story, also set in the present, a grieving wife and artist named Katherine has recently moved to West Hall. Her photographer husband, Gary is recently killed in a car accident, supposedly shooting for a wedding. But she discovers there was no wedding and learns that Gary visited a woman in a café in West Hall. Katherine is desperate to understand the reason for her husband's visit. These two stories in the present are of course connected to the strange life and death of Sara Harrison.

The first-half of ‘Winter People’ is really absorbing, transplanting us to the snow-covered small-town Vermont setting. The construction and execution of atmospheric horror in the early chapters is beyond excellent. The description of wintry woods, the arduous farm-life, the pale ghostly figure spotted between tree trunks, tales of  people disappearing without a trace, and all other chilling elements are superbly built up by Jennifer McMahon. Sara’s tale is full of dark foreboding and heart-breaking developments, and it’s easily the best among the three story-lines. The novel’s major themes deal with mother-daughter relationship which is well-realized in both the timelines plus the hold grief has over the humans. The characters are also very well developed (especially Ruthie Sara, and Katherine). Moreover, the clues and red-herrings deeply engages us. However, the novel sort of implodes in the last-third, as guns are brought into play. I particularly abhorred the Candace character whose actions and behavior are jarring enough to adversely impact the novel’s tone. The interactions also become very stiff in these parts, sounding too formulaic. The conclusion was also not convincing, and all these factors considerably bring down the novel’s quality (because the first-half was so propulsive). Still, it will be a captivating page-turner for mystery and thriller aficionados.