The Mysterious Women of J Road

Praise for Allison Cundiff

“Using the darkest of Vance Randolph’s romantic folklore as a jumping-off point, Allison Cundiff reimagines a rural Ozarks unlike anything you’ve ever encountered, a hidden and haunted society deep in the hills. Anyone who travels the dirt trails to meet The Mysterious Women of J Road will think twice before their next twilight walk in the woods.”
– Dr. Brooks Blevins, Noel Boyd Professor of Ozarks Studies at Missouri State University

“This Ozarks supernatural thriller has it all, from healers to hexes to howlers, and maybe even Old Scratch himself. But it also has a very human story at its center, a story of love and devotion that outlasts everything the forces of chaos can throw at it.”
– Steve Wiegenstein, author of Land of Joys, Scattered Lights, Slant of Light, This Old World, and The Language of Trees 

“The Mysterious Women of J Road is an Ozark horror story filled with spells and strange beasts, demons and dark magic. But Allison Cundiff’s genius as a storyteller is to ground the tale in even stronger, if far less fantastical stuff: family bonds, the handing down of traditions, and the human imperative to protect those we love. Witches and healers. Vines that sting and vines that soothe. Red-eyed Ozark howlers and good, loyal dogs. Here’s a novel to disappear into. You’ll come out the other side more aware than ever that the world is a strange and woolly place, and grateful for the guiding hands of the gifted storytellers who help us better understand it all.”
– David Williams, author of Come Again No More and Everybody Knows 

“From yarb-doctors and granny-women to snake-handling and animal-omens, hexes, howlers, and hoodoo, Cundiff’s novel fishes the deep dark pools of Ozarks lore. More, it captures the history-haunted psyche of that landscape: those cricks no sensible person dares cross, and the half-seen things that wander the woods. There are things in the woods that wonder what you taste like. The Thing you can’t see is worse than the Thing you can, but worst is the Thing caught fleetingly, out of the corner of one’s eye. Cundiff’s novel grows from deep folkloric roots, a world where what we’re talking about isn’t really what we’re talking about, where a little girl told the famous field collector Vance Randolph, ‘We always lie to strangers.’ It works from suspense, but also that emotion’s more serious sibling, dread. It joins the growing library of Missouri noir.”
– Dr. Adam Brooke Davis, Professor of English, Truman State University, and Editor of GHLL