Book Review: Girl in the Creek

We're watching the world burn. There's little disagreement about that among those following the science. Our planet loses between 200 and 2000 species every year. What would the forest say if it had a voice? How would the animals feel if they could tell us? Would they express rage or grief?

Wendy N. Wagner's new novel Girl in the Creek might have an answer. The novel sets us up with a big cast of outdoorsy 30-something REI Instagramer types all of which at first glance act more like teenagers in a Friday the 13th slasher than professional adults. They go out partying at night in the woods where they know people are disappearing. They drink and smoke on the job. These are high functioning athletic, beautiful people, each with their own nerdy interests. It isn't until we get deeper into the narrative that their cracks start to show.

Erin and Hari have a podcast, that's their main work even though the side hustle working as travel bloggers is the one that pays the bills. They use resources from their professional job to investigate missing persons which is why they are drawn to the Clackamas forest. This isn't any old morbid true crime obsession, it's personal. Erin lost a brother when she was younger in a presumed suicide but his body was never found and she's never given up the search. They've partnered with a couple, Kayla and Matt, as well as Kayla's sister Madison. Local instagram influencer Jordan and gear outfitter Dahlia finish off this millenial Scooby gang of forlorn misfits.

The town they're investigating has an abnormally high number of missing persons, nearly all of them being Latinx women. It doesn't take long for the investigation to run afoul of the locals and their distrust and hostility toward outsiders, sometimes in violent fashion.

Fenway is a character itself, perhaps pulling inspiration from Twin Peaks, the strange, larger than life characters that inhabit the small forest community are one of the highlights of the book. There's a weird incompetent deputy, mean as hell redneck brothers, an eccentric heiress with mysterious past who now runs a bed and breakfast, and a weird old guy who collects and sells mushrooms.

If environmentalism is your draw you'll likely be pleased. The most haunting passages come from the perspective of the forest, made alert and connected by the intoxicating presence of "the strangeness," a fungal invader carried by a meteorite. This invading corruption becomes a sort of metaphor for contemporary environmental anxieties but also grief.

When Erin and Jordan follow a tip to a ghost town, they discover the titular girl in the creek before being chased away by gunfire. The authorities are alerted the body is taken to the morgue then disappears.

Girl in the Creek is an engrossing summer horror read. It's bleak and stirring. The body horror is wonderfully nasty, delivering grotesque transmutations and monsters that would fit right in with John Carpenter's The Thing. Many of the victims changed are innocent, some with very real connections to nature, almost as if they're changed like our heroine by grief.

I wasn't completely won over by all the characters. Despite having a queer protagonist, one of the supporting cast, Hari felt like a caricature of a gay man in horror and follows nearly every trope and at one point ends up literally trapped in a closet. Some of the troop never make themselves distinct and are clearly waiting for their moment to be felled by the strangeness. As I received an uncorrected proof, I cannot say for certain but one character's name seemed to change at random. And while the active voice, impressively never falters, sometimes it's a bit too aggressive in choice of verbiage. Also, characters reactions or moods occasionally didn't quite fit their situation.

There's a love for ecology thrumming through this novel which I enjoyed heartily. Science factoids and nerdy ecology and biology conversations pepper the volume and give the fantastical elements a layer of believability. I'm also a sucker for whenever an author can work in the iridium deposited by the K-pg impact having actually taken samples from it in the field.

Girl in the Creek is a bleak novel, it deals with some really heavy emotional baggage and themes that likely will stir your own sense of grief and loss at what's happening to our planet. But in my mind, the active consumption of something like that, especially in the season when we're closest to nature might do us some good

So, if you like slime, environmentalism, fungus, nature, and/or body horror, pack this one in your camp sack; or take it to the vegan barbeque where you grill up some portobellos. It's a mystery full of surprises that keep coming all the way up to the final page with an ending that will leave you squirming. It just might spark a needed conversation.

Girl in the Creek hits shelves tomorrow. As always, I'm linking an unaffiliated local St. Louis bookstore who I think deserves your loving patronage. This time it's SUBTERRANEAN BOOKS in University City, Missouri. They saved my bacon on a bookclub read recently!

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