Review: 'White Horse'

 ©2022 All Rights Reserved Lynne Perednia

White Horse
By Erika Wurth
Horror
Flatiron Books

The late horror writer Peter Straub once told me, in an online interview, that he decided to write in that genre because of the freedom is gave him to write about all kinds of things. One short story of his in particular, about a boy who was bullied, showed me how true his statement was.

Among the indigeneous authors now writing in the horror genre, doing the same thing, is Erika Wurth. Her novel, White Horse, is ostensibly about what happens when a bracelet with power is brought to the protagonist. But this story is about a lot more, and it is a story told well.

Kari James has reached equilibrium in her once rowdy, rebellious life. She's still no pushover, but she has cleaned up her act and works long hours at two waitress jobs. Time off includes hanging out at the White Horse, a rundown Denver tavern that has a long history of catering to both urban and tribal Indians, reading horror novels and petting the saloon's cats while sipping beer or whisky. She's still recovering from the long ago deaths of her best friend and her mother.

That equilibrium is disrupted when her cousin Debby, who has a history of pestering Kari into not destroying herself, brings her a bracelet that belonged to Kari's mother. Her mother disappeared when she was two days old, and Kari has spent the last 30-some years angry at her. That her father suffered an accident that destroyed his brain in mourning her doesn't help. The moment Kari touches the bracelet, she sees ghosts from her past. First it's Jaime, her best friend who OD'd when they were partying hard, then her mother. Her mother's ghost is accompanied by the specter of evil following close behind.

Wurth is wonderful at describing what Kari and Jaime were like in their wild days, growing up in Idaho Springs, wishing for more, whatever that might be, and why Kari will always love heavy metal rock.

We'd hitched one Saturday night, ready for adventures of the kind that could not be had in a small town that sat at the bottom of a mountain, the trees swaying above our trailers, our dingy houses, our wild, furious hearts.

As the story progresses, Wurth uses the tropes of horror to tell the story of a young Indian woman who disappeared just when it looked like she had everything to live for -- a husband she loved, a new baby, a political cause. And this fits so well. The real-life monsters who abuse women, who kill them, who are frightened of them having a voice, are no less menacing than a grim paranormal creature of death. And because this is a horror novel, just as in magic realism, they are intertwined.

White Horse reaches its full narrative power as it becomes a story of individual indigeneous women and men who form alliances, who forge communities, who recognize their connections to each other as family.

Erika Wurth joins the company of such powerful storytellers as Stephen Graham Jones, Rebecca Roanhorse and Cheri Demiline, and authors who sometimes use the tropes of horror/magic realism such as the great Louise Erdrich, Richard Wagamese, Morgan Talty and Cynthia Letitch Smith.

They acknowledge the spiritual in life as well as the physical and emotional. They take full adantage of the folklore roots of horror storytelling to explore psychological aspects of the indigenious experience. They create characters to care about and insights into their experiences. This is storytelling to treasure.