Southern Gods

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There are two main characters here. First we’ve got Bull Ingram, a WWII vet dispatched to find the secretive, strange musician broadcasting his devil music from some unknown pirate radio station in the murky American south; second is Sarah, fresh from leaving her deadbeat husband she returns home with her daughter and rediscovers her family’s past. Yeah-yeah, but what’s it about? A lot of strange stuff happens in Southern Gods from terrific access to the southern culture of backwoods Arkansas in the 1950′s to a supernatural horror and violence that sets the bar high for modern Lovecraft-interpretation. While none of it is cutesy and some of it is gross I have to say I am impressed that the violence is not gratuitous. Jacobs uses those opportunities to explore deeper emotional pains for his characters. Ingram, who survived the war, is dragged through a madness more horrible than any mere boogie-man, and Sarah has the curtain pulled back on some hard truths and in some ways has the more interesting journey of learning how to stand on her own two feet. Both of these characters get through it, if you can call it that, not because they are tough but because they just haven’t given up, not yet. So then I guess if you’re the kind of person who wants to pigeon-hole a novel by asking, What’s it about, then the answer you deserve is probably: Hope. It’s a dark novel about hope, about putting one foot in front of the other. But reading this novel is also like taking a vacation into the hot deep south. Jacobs writes about place as lovingly as he writes about people. He’s got chops, no doubt about it. He’s got a solid handle on the hardboiled genre and Southern Gods proves he knows how to bring a little Cthulhu into the modern world.