In this episode of Narrative Edge, you join Peter Biello and Orlando Montoya for a conversation about Dark Sisters, the new horror novel by Atlanta writer Kristi DeMeester. Set across the 1700s, the 1950s, and 2007 in and around Atlanta, the story follows women trapped in oppressive Christian communities and bound by a generational curse that causes their mouths to rot when they hide their true selves. You hear how DeMeester weaves folk horror, queer love, and questions of personal freedom into a Southern gothic that feels hauntingly close to home.

Dark Sisters by Kristi DeMeester

Credit: St. Martin's Press

On this episode of Narrative Edge, you spend time with Dark Sisters, the haunting new novel from Atlanta author Kristi DeMeester. Peter Biello introduces the story of three women who live in different eras around Atlanta, the 1700s, the 1950s, and 2007, yet share a common struggle. Anne Bolton is a healer who risks being branded a witch in a community primed for a hunt for independent women. Mary is a 1950s housewife whose love for another woman collides with an age of rigid conformity. Camilla is the teen daughter of a charismatic preacher who leads a cult-like Christian group called the Path, where young people who step out of line are sent to a place called Retreat.

Peter and Orlando dig into the way the book uses supernatural horror to make emotional terror visible. A curse born under a strange walnut tree appears as an illness that attacks women who deny their own desires; their teeth loosen and fall, and their mouths erupt in sores and rot. That body horror is tied directly to the pressure to be perfect wives, perfect mothers, and perfectly obedient believers. While the novel features gore, the hosts argue the real horror is the fear of being seen and punished for who you are, especially in communities where religion and patriarchy reinforce each other.

The conversation also highlights the novel as a meditation on freedom. In the 1950s storyline, Mary and her lover, Sharon, ask what freedom means if you can only love behind closed doors. In 2007, Camilla weighs loyalty to family against survival in a controlling religious group. Peter shares how DeMeester drew on her own upbringing and on the climate around reproductive rights after the fall of Roe v. Wade to imagine women who pay a physical and spiritual price for hiding themselves. You also hear about DeMeester’s side craft horror-themed candles that extend the atmosphere of her fiction into scent-filled ritual. By the end, you come away with a sense of Dark Sisters as both a chilling ghost story and a clear-eyed look at how women still fight to claim their full selves.