Craig Davidson (Rust and Bone) harnesses the appeal of campfire tales in his coming-of-age story The Saturday Night Ghost Club. Jake Baker remembers the summer he was 12, when he believed in monsters and adult benevolence--and discovered both were purely imaginary.
Jake lives in Niagara Falls, Ontario, where the magnificent Falls loom over seedy tourist traps. His Uncle Calvin owns the Occultorium, a store that attracts tourists as well as local kids eager to be a little scared. Jake himself is easily frightened, but when Calvin tells him and his two friends, "There are places I know... where the barriers between our world and the spirit realm are full of holes," they gamely join his "Saturday Night Ghost Club." The club breaks into a mortuary, investigates the site of a deadly house fire and creeps into haunted tunnels. Calvin's nighttime adventures, however, aren't as random as they seem. Jake learns the sobering truth that evil is a human trait, not ghostly, displayed by those who are "circling the burning fires of civilization, waiting for us to step away from the light."
Davidson also writes horror novels under the pseudonym Nick Cutter, explaining his adroit handling of the ghostly events. This novel presents what adults know full well: life's deepest fears have little to do with conventional horror and everything to do with love and loss. This compact novel is reminiscent of Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine and Stephen King's The Body: dark and unforgettable coming-of-age stories. --Cindy Pauldine, bookseller, the river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.