Wisp of a Thing: A Novel of the Tufa (Tufa Novels)
One of the very good things about Bledsoe’s latest novel is that we can’t tell, until we’re well into the book, whether it’s a fantasy or offbeat mainstream. Musician Rob Quillen, a contestant on a TV singing competition, is devastated when his girlfriend, who was being flown to Hollywood to surprise him for the show’s final episode, is killed when her plane crashes. Told about the Tufa, a mysterious group of people living in the Great Smoky Mountains, Rob heads off to Needsville, Tennessee, in search of a song that can heal a broken heart. At first, the small town feels a little isolated, its people a bit quirky to Rob’s big-city eyes. But soon he begins to notice odd things: a graveyard that seems to have vanished when he returns to it; strange, humanlike, howling sounds from the woods. This is a very subtle book; like Graham Masterton, Bledsoe relies on the slow accumulation of tantalizing hints to give the reader a sense of something going on in the space between the words on the page. A chilling mix of fantasy, realism, and a touch of horror. --David Pitt