Mamma Lucy don’t suffer fools, she don’t take no sass, and she ain’t no witch. Call her hoodoo woman, conjure lady, root doctor, but call her right — you may have need of her.
From Georgia to Vermont, Mamma Lucy travels a long road, facing the darkness and injustices of haint-ridden nineteen twenties America, silver dimes at her ankle and hoodoo at her side.
Dark bleatings, my mysterious tribe. I’m reviewing a short story collection today that’s a bit more interesting because it features one main character, and for that reason, the book also works as one fluid story. I do love it when authors write collections and do something a bit more creative with the format like this.
The stories are about Mamma Lucy, an intriguing and bold character that’s very easy to get on board with. She reminded me a bit of Mother Abigail from Stephen King’s The Stand (she’s one of my favourite characters of all time, by the way).
As I said, this does actually work in a singular story format, but I do have some favourites of the short stories and so here they are:
DOWN AT THE CROSSROADS
Mamma Lucy is burying eggs at a crossroads. At the mere mention of crossroads, my brain went right to Supernatural, and I wondered if she was burying something to try to summon a crossroads demon. ‘The Dark Man’ appears and let me tell you, he’d be terrifying to a regular person, which is how you know Mamma Lucy is special, because she is completely unbothered. This story sets the tone for the whole book and has shades of, and little winks to, several stories that I love. It was also pretty impressive to me how much information is actually given in so few pages – we get Mamma Lucy’s strength of character, the indication that she isn’t like everyone else, that the supernatural is very much real, and a whole bunch of other little clues and details.
STOOPED
If I have written this title incorrectly, I profusely apologise. I read this book during May, when I manically read 63 books in a mission to clear my review request pile and honour the authors by finally getting around to their work. My notes were… well… to put it as nicely as possible… a handwriting abomination. A plight on the written word, and an embarrassment to everyone who’s ever wielded a pen. I think the title is ‘Stooped’, but the word I wrote down could also say ‘stapled’, ‘steeped’, ‘stupid’, ‘staged’, or most bizarrely, ‘ntapled’. So.
Anyway, about the story… Mamma Lucy is criticised by a preacher but unfortunately for this self-righteous twit, it appears that she knows the Bible better than he does. I really enjoyed the character work in this story, and the dialogue is excellent.
DARK MAN STANDING
Mamma Lucy and The Dark Man meet again, the latter too self assured in who he is. Mamma Lucy has her own opinions on his relevance.
The way I’ve written this review is a little unconventional and outside of what I normally like to do. I always mention my 3 favourite stories in a collection but it was very hard to go into much detail here without spoiling things, on account of the overall structure.
It’s a really interesting piece of work with great characters and themes, and I absolutely loved Mamma Lucy. I’d recommend this to general horror fans, and I think that King fans might get an extra kick out of it. I’f you’d like to check out the book or author, I’ve popped some links below for you:
Bleeeat!
Happy Goat Horror 
Leave a comment