Dew Claws By Stephen Gresham

Dew Claws
By Stephen Gresham
1986 Zebra
Paperback, 335 pages

    Let’s face it. I wanted this book for the cover. Even though my copy is tattered, a skeleton playing a banjo and wearing a to-the-side baseball cap is a fantastic and hilarious image. Thank you, Zebra. Thank you, artist (William Teason?). But will the book be any good?

    I admit that I almost didn’t make it at first. The lead character is a young boy named Johnny Ray. Strike one. Then, there is a lot of spelled out, thick Southern dialect. I don’t like trying to figure out what is being said. But at about 100 pages in, I realized that I was enjoying the book for what it is… a very well-written, quiet slice of folk horror.

    The afore-mentioned Johnny Ray is out in Night Horse Swamp with his uncle and brothers when everybody except JR gets sucked into the muck and disappear. Soon, he is being fostered by a couple (the Merseys) who operate a daycare, and they become a family. But behind the Mersey’s home lie some thick woods and the swamp. Johnny Ray and some of the other workers have seen things. Spirits, barely visible, and they want the children. JR (as Sam Mercy calls him, and so shall I) has seen his brothers among those cantankerous spirits. They are the Dew Claws, and they are to be feared.

    Gresham works up a nice story of the Dew Claws and lays the Southern Gothic atmosphere on thick. Most of the spelled-out dialect stops, except for the maid Melba, who is very difficult to decipher for my old, addled brain. If I’m being honest, the way the African Americans are depicted made me a little bit uncomfortable but there are some very likeable black characters, so I guess it’s all good. As JR starts to develop a Dew Claw of his own, he sets out seeking a cure and meets a slew of oddball characters who may or may not be able to help. The Chokers are a particular delight as they have an Eastern Indigo snake as a beloved family member named Day Lou. (There is, however, quite a lot of hunting and frog gigging that I could have done without. But I guess that’s a part of swamp living.)

    Not exactly in my wheelhouse of blood and guts or animals killing humans novels, but I’m glad I stuck with this one after all. What does that great cover have to do with anything? Not much. JR plays a banjo and wears a cap sometimes. Good enough for me.