Since time immemorial, the Haddesley family has tended the cranberry bog. In exchange, the bog sustains them. The staunch seasons of their lives are governed by a strict covenant that is renewed each generation with the ritual sacrifice of their patriarch, and in return, the bog produces a “bog-wife.” Brought to life from vegetation, this woman is meant to carry on the family line. But when the bog fails—or refuses—to honor the bargain, the Haddesleys, a group of discordant siblings still grieving the mother who mysteriously disappeared years earlier, face an unknown future.

Middle child Wenna, summoned back to the dilapidated family manor just as her marriage is collapsing, believes the Haddesleys must abandon their patrimony. Her siblings are not so easily persuaded. Eldest daughter Eda, de facto head of the household, seeks to salvage the compact by desecrating it. Younger son Percy retreats into the wilderness in a dangerous bid to summon his own bog-wife. And as youngest daughter Nora takes desperate measures to keep her warring siblings together, fledgling patriarch Charlie uncovers a disturbing secret that casts doubt over everything the family has ever believed about itself.

Brimming with aching loss and the universal struggle between honoring family commitments and the drive to strike out on one’s own, The Bog Wife is a haunting invocation of the arcane power of the habits and habitats that bound us.

It has become a cliché to describe the setting of a story as a character. But with good reason. In some of the best novels, a setting transcends the role of backdrop and comes to take on a life that recasts the narrative. Such is the case with The Bog Wife, a remarkable gothic tale set in a crumbling mansion on an Appalachian cranberry bog.

For as long as anyone can remember, the Haddesley family has stewarded the bog. In return, the bog has sustained them. This relationship involves a number of rituals. The most important: each generation the family patriarch is sacrificed in exchange for a “bog wife,” who is betrothed to the next generation’s patriarch to continue the family line.

Wenna Haddesley has returned from a long exile to help oversee the bog wife ritual with her siblings. She hopes that it will pass quickly so that she can again put many miles between herself and this ancestral land. But, to Wenna and her siblings’ dismay, the ritual fails. This shock leads the siblings to battle with each other over who is to blame and eventually begin questioning their family mythos and how it has shaped them (and the bog).

I have never read a book like The Bog Wife—a strange and beguiling meditation on the eternal struggles between nature and nurture, familial obligations and individuality. I felt as obsessed as the Haddesleys by the bog and its mysterious powers. I suspect you will be, too.