God's Own Country

I grew up in a Christian church - Sunday school, confirmation classes, the hymns, church camp, the quiet expectation that you'd believe what you were told and not ask too many questions. I eventually walked away from the church, though not from faith entirely, largely for the reasons Mathew L. Reyes explores in these pages: the ugliness that hides behind righteousness, and the way institutions built on love can become engines of exclusion and harm - particularly toward the queer community.

So, when a friend told me about God's Own Country: A Trinity of Novellas, I didn't expect it to feel so personal.

Reyes sets three horror novellas in Louisiana - each one loosely structured around a face of the Trinity - and uses that framework to dig into faith, fear, and the cost of blind devotion. The writing itself is stunning. Reyes has a gift for description that pulls you completely into each scene - the oppressive heat, the shadows in the trees, the suffocating weight of a congregation's silence. I didn't feel like I was reading about these places and people; I felt like I was standing right there among them.

A word of caution, though: this is horror. Descriptive, unflinching horror. If the themes appeal to you but you're sensitive to graphic death and destruction, this may not be the read for you. Go in knowing that. But if you can handle it, what's waiting on the other side is something genuinely meaningful.