Read This Book . . .

We meet 19-year-old Magnolia at her grandmother’s funeral. Left with no one, Magnolia is forced to find a way to support herself. Enter a man named Cotton, who tells her that he wants to hire her to impersonate his clients’ dead loved ones. Families approach Cotton seeking a way to connect with dead family members and friends, which they didn’t get to do in real life. A makeup artist styles and makes Magnolia up to be as close to the real thing as possible. Then Magnolia video calls with Cotton’s clients.

The novel plays with ideas of death, the things that haunt the living, and how decisions we make in this life can impact the next. The storytelling includes both sinister and hopefull qualities, encapsulating where Magnolia is in her life. The city of Knoxville is an odd character in and of itself, a place abuzz with life, while a lost lower class wanders the edges of the city, intentionally forgotten by the city’s more well off citizens.

Author Monica Breashears is an Affrilachian writer from East Tennessee. She imbues her work with Black Appalchian folkways and folklore, giving her novel a horror-like feel, complete with hauntings and malevolent spirits. I love how she pulls from so many literary traditions, creating an Appalachian Southern Gothic novel, the likes of which I’ve never read before.

In the audiobook, Jeanette Illage performs House of Cotton with all of the twisted drama that this book needs. There’s suspense with a spooky quality that only comes from the American South that she just gets perfectly. She also finds a balance with the Affrilachian dialect that Magnolia and her grandmother speak. I had chills listening to Illage voice the ghosts in this book. I cannot recommend the audio edition enough.