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Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite
To Those Willing to Drown by Mark Matthews is a story driven by Lucas Lamia, a cursed former Civil War surgeon who made a dark pact with a supernatural Well at Torch Lake to save his sick son Benjamin, exchanging blood and limbs for life. Over more than a century, Lucas injects the cremated ashes of deceased children to sustain his cursed son’s trapped soul and his own vitality. Lucas turns to hunting grieving parents, extracting limbs and ashes to fulfill the Well’s demands, perpetuating a cycle of sacrifice and torment. Meanwhile, generations of families, Sharon Murphy and her children Dylan and Jewel among them, are entangled in this curse. Sharon makes a pact to save Dylan, which in turn dooms her daughter. Lucas violently pursues Sharon to harvest her limbs and Jewel’s ashes to break his curse, while the lake itself becomes a dark realm where souls are trapped, consumed, or reborn.
Mark Matthews’ To Those Willing to Drown is a heavy read, and I admit that it took me a few chapters to get into it, especially since my expectations of the direction of the story were subverted. Don't get me wrong, this is a good thing. The payoff was a tale that is so much more haunting in its unique take on the traditional legend of souls caught between worlds. I really love the inclusion of the eerie pact and the witch Mishipeshu, and the skill required to balance paranormal horror in prose that has the graceful lilt usually found in literary fiction is not lost on me. Matthews employs pain, trauma, loss, and conflict, juxtaposed against quiet observation and spiritual reckoning, to the book's advantage. The standouts are Jewel’s journey as a fractured soul, Kai’s plea for release, and a truly surprising guardian arc that is terrifyingly beautiful. Overall, this is an intelligent piece of literature and a gripping experience that lingers long after its conclusion. Very highly recommended.
