I admit this is my first time reading Nat Cassidy, and certainly it won't be the last. I realized something dangerous. I feel like I know the guy; we have plenty of mutual friends. I have been listening to Nat on Talking Scared with their Dark Tower series for a while now. I feel like I have gotten to know his taste, and so this is very much like reading a book written by a friend.
The storytelling skill is very smooth, and it may have been influenced by reading it directly after a book that didn’t work for me. This one felt effortlessly written. Like a pure jump shot in hoop, nothing but net.
It was an accident, but I went in cold on the plot, and that helped because major reveals worked perfectly for me. I say accident, as when Nat appeared here in San Diego, I planned to go to the event and hear him talk about the book. The problem was Nat’s website said 7 PM, and even though I know Saturday events at Mysterious Galaxy are typically in the afternoon, and the store is not open. I took the bus across town and showed up at 7 PM. There were two other people as confused as me. They helped me feel less stupid.
When Judge Rothenberg had this on his best of list last year (we do my year-end review together annually on my podcast) I joked that I refused to read it, but the truth is I was planning to buy a copy and it took me a while to get one, after the wrong time event.
None of that matters to you; the question you have is whether this is a good book. This is a spectacular horror novel, with SF elements that put it in a similar vibe to King’s Firestarter or the John Farris classic The Fury. This modern take on those types of stories has to break new ground, and it does, if you want to be completely unspoiled, you have to trust me and stop here.
With the title When the Wolf Comes Home, many have mistaken this novel for a werewolf novel, but the wolf of the title is not a werewolf at all. That is not the only narrative misdirection, and with each turn, Cassidy got me. The theme is inspired by lost or missing fathers.
Firestarter, The Fury, and the underrated recent film Midnight Special are all similar, stories with magical supernaturally powerful kids. Jess, our POV for this story, is a flawed but likable lead. She makes questionable calls but I understand her fine. Her co-worker Margie is an example of a character with a short page count but I remembered her better than main characters of the book I read before this. The kid is someone we feel for even as he becomes the source of terror.
Cassidy has moments where the horror is perfectly calibrated, if we didn’t care about the kid it wouldn’t work this scene in the early pages between Margie and The Kid is everything the novel needs.
“With another groan, Margie straightens up and quickly jogs out of the room. The boy hears the door open nearby, and then she's back, “Tada.” She presents him with a radial blanket. Threadbare and dulled from untold washes... But still surprisingly soft to the touch.
“What is it?” he asked.
“That right there, my friend, is an invisibility blanket. Do you know what invisible means? It means, whenever you're scared, if you hide under this blanket? The things you're scared of can't see you.”
Cassidy subverts the reader's expectation and reverses the trope of the genre but first he has to make the father as scary as he can. It works.
“Kid, I'm not sure what is going on tonight, but whatever that was that wasn't your daddy. I don't even think it was human.”
“It was daddy,” he repeats with an edge of frustration. “He's still mad. And when he gets mad, he..”
“He what?” No answer. “OK, look. She has no idea what to say or how to say it. “Your dad was a bad guy, I get it. And I definitely know what it's like to build up your dad in your head. But daddies are just people, your dad's just a person in fact, I'm sorry to tell you this, but he's probably dead. That thing at my apartment, the wolf thing? I don't think anyone besides us, you know got away. Including your daddy. Do you know what dad means?”
The reversal is an absolute spoiler, but holy hell did the progression work. When the Wolf Comes Home is a testament that we can take a well-explored subgenre and breathe powerful life into the modern horror novel. I would also say this one has speculative elements. An instant classic that has sold me on reading Cassidy deeper.
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