Bloodroot

by Thomas Mordane

IN THE BEGINNING

. . .Was the oak, its hungry roots reaching deep into the earth, its gnarled limbs searching the distant heavens. . .
TWO CENTURIES AGO

Obediah Magrute worshipped the Oak and died violently beneath it, feeding it with his blood and bone, shouting his chilling curse to the skies. . .
NOW

Laura and Mark Avery have come to the bustling little Vermont village. They have given up their frenetic city life to settle in the old Eldridge Place, to have their child. They are not superstitious. They find the local legends quaint. But as the seasons turn, as the full moon rises, people die in Hubley's Gore in thrall to an ancient, terrible power. . .
BLOODROOT

Genres: Horror

285 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1982

Reviews

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun, well written read by Mordane, but a few issues kept me from rating this higher. Bloodroot's prologue has some Abenaki finding a huge old oak tree on a mountain ("In the beginning was the oak") in what is now Vermont then being decimated by a violent lightning storm; they left cairns as warnings. Then came the white man who founded the town Hubley's Gore in the valley next to the oak's mountain in 1791. A few decades later, a 'druid' wandered into town, purchased the mountain and built a small cabin by the big oak. A little bit later, he was lynched under the oak (he refused to let loggers cut the oaks down) and just before he died, laid a curse on the culprits and their families. When the loggers started to cut the oaks, a series of strange and bizarre mishaps occurred, leaving many of them dead...

Flash forward to the early 80s when Bloodroot was first published. A NYC couple ('flatlanders') purchase an old farmhouse and land that abuts the oak mountain, wanting to get away from the city. The husband, Mark, wants to pursue his paintings and his wife, Laura, worked as a model, but wants to have kids. They, after lots of backbreaking work, fix up the old homestead and meet the neighbors. Hubley's Gore is quaint to say the least, but the only church seems more rooted in druidic faith than Christianity. What kinds of terrible secrets are lurking in the town?

Mordane gives us a classic 'small town with a big secret' story here, with the 'outsiders' arriving to discover what is really going on. It seems 'outsiders' never last too long in town, the latest one dying shortly before their arrival. Bloodroot possesses a lot of promise, but Mordane leaned a bit to heavy on the foreshadowing. Further and this is a bit spoilery it was never clear what exactly the foo was. Was it the ancient oak tree or just the druidic cult that the original druid in the prologue founded. Have they become symbiotic? Mordane was never very clear here. Is the oak evil? What does that mean? In any case, Bloodroot still unfolded nicely with some good creeps on the way, and Mordane really pegged the Veermont accent! 3.5 stars!!

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.0 stars out of 5. I hoard every evil plant book I can find, since they are hard to come by. Thomas Mordane is a good writer, there is plenty in this book that I've underlined (that means I like it a lot). However, BloodRoot suffers from technical issues. The center of evil is a cursed tree, the Oak. A cult of fanatic worshipers offers human sacrifices to the oak so that the other trees will prosper and the profit from the town's saw mill will enable the town to maintain its independence from the outside world. The Oak can affect the weather, faces sometimes appear in it, and all wood cut from the sacred area is jinxed- so that it brings death- fire, accidents. However the event involving one of the major characters, one of the book's climaxes, was disappointing- "the Oak made me do it" sort of thing. This new power appeared out of no where, and was unsatisfying. Was the Oak controlling other people? There is nothing to hint at such a possibility, making this new power come off as forced to include a chainsaw. Now on to the technical issue I mentioned. Terrible things happen to Laura's friend, Polly Boggs. The events build tension and work to advance the story, but then when the same things happen to Laura the tension evaporates and predictability sets in. The book's major plot twist is revealed early so that when it's revealed to Laura at the end it's old news- the reader has to trudge alongside Laura's struggles already knowing they are in vain. At certain points in the book the villains reveal their plans or "show the reader"; I think the book would have been more powerful if these reveals had been saved for the right moment. The ending could have worked, but I didn't believe it enough for it to punch me. There are some excellent passages in this story though, I'll have to find another book by Thomas Mordane.

[Scott Oliver · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favourite book is ‘Harvest Home’ by Thomas Tryon and this came closest to it that I have read for a long while.

The same themes, reverence for the earth and sacred rites abounds through both