I bought this book by Thomas Tryon at around the same time I bought his another of his books, called The Other. While the other book was more suspense, this one was horror. Flat out, gory horror.

This book doesn’t even have details on Amazon. It was originally published in 1973 and I think is out of print. I got it on half.com.

…spoilers ahead.

I skimmed this book, because I had read the synopsis on Wikipedia before deciding to buy it, but I have to say, this is far and away one of the scarier books I’ve read. It reminded me of a season one episode of Supernatural, called ‘Scarecrow’ which scared the crap out of me. In that episode, the residents of of a rural town are sacrificing one unfortunate man and woman that come through town to some pagan spirit for a good crop every year. The episode scared the crap out of me when I first saw it. I was about 17 or 18 when the episode first aired.

Some things never stop scaring you.

In this book, a man from New York City brings his wife and daughter to the little New England town of Cornwall Coombe. At first, Ned thinks they’re living the ideal “small town” life. People in the town are very “set in their ways” and their customs, and the family thinks they’re weird, but overlooks the weirdness in the effort to fit in and enjoy their lives and make friends.

Well, odd things start happening. At first Ned doesn’t think much of them, but as things get weirder and weirder, he begins to realize something is going on, and a lot of it has to do with a woman who was buried on unconsecrated ground.

While the town practices some form of Christianity openly, it turns out there all these pagan rituals the women of the town conduct in order to ensure a good harvest. Anyone who speaks out against the ritual is maimed or killed, as well as men who witness the major ritual, where the corn maiden and the harvest lord have sex and then when they’re done the corn maiden slashes the harvest lord’s throat.  Yeah, it’s lovely.

The original corn maiden chosen commits suicide so she won’t have to slash the harvest lord’s throat, who is her new husband. Ned is determined to solve the mysteries in the town, goes out to see the ritual, but gets caught. They let him watch. It turns out his wife is now corn maiden, and she has sex with the guy, and then kills him.

As the book ends, Ned realizes that the people in Cornwall Coombe only allowed his family to move in to gain the new blood of his wife (who is now pregnant – it was one of their “settled” marital problems that Ned was shooting blanks and they couldn’t have more kids) and his daughter, whose relationship with one of the prominent local boys leads to speculation she’ll be the next corn maiden. Ned has been blinded by the women, and his tongue had been cut out.

Still scares me. The book was a little slow to start, but you have the sense from the beginning that something is off, even though Ned is completely blind to it. Once it got going though, it was great. Like an old horror movie in book form. Unlike Tryon’s other book, The Other, I didn’t guess the ending. I had a sneaky suspicion about the pagan rituals, but I’d had faith that the family would somehow get out of the situation in one piece. I suppose they kind of do, but it just leaves you feeling eerie. This is the kind of book that should be adapted into a film.

Like I said, I enjoyed the mystery here. I didn’t guess the end but I did have the feeling that something was wrong the whole time, even when nothing seemed wrong, which I really enjoyed.

Tryon’s writing style can sometimes be overbearingly descriptive, which I found true in both The Other and Harvest Home. While I do love rich prose, some times you don’t have to describe every detail of the rundown house. The story more than makes up for this though. It’s one gory surprise after the next, and I really enjoyed it.

I’d recommend this book to anyone who likes a nice terror & horror/suspense mystery. It was published in the 1970s and is a bit dated, but that somehow adds to the atmosphere of the book. No computers, no cell phones, it just makes the fictional town that much more isolated from the outside world, and that much more scary. The “no one can hear you scream” scary.

Tagged: authors: thomas tryon, books: harvest home, genre: horror/terror