Kristi DeMeester, author of SUCH A PRETTY SMILE, returns with DARK SISTERS, a witchy, spellbinding blend of horror and historical fiction.

Welcome to Hawthorne Springs (yes, that Hawthorne, a clever allusion to THE SCARLET LETTER and literature’s favorite marked woman). In this small Southern town, three generations of women find themselves oppressed, marginalized and subdued, all while the controlling men around them reap the benefits of their labor.

First, in 1750, we meet Anne Bolton, a healer whose knowledge of the medicinal properties of plants and herbs, once a boon to her community, has been branded a witch. Knowing that it will be her young, unmarried daughter who will suffer if she is caught and tried, she and Florence flee in the night, taking to the woods, where she feels bolstered by the natural magic around her.

Generations later, in 1953, we meet Mary Shephard, the perfect 1950s Stepford housewife, down to her cinched waist, pearls, and the dazzlingly white new washer-dryer set with which her husband has just surprised her. Mary adores her baby girl, Ada, but she is tortured by a secret desire and the sense that the confines of her perfect suburban housewife life have become too tight.

Finally, in 2007, we meet Camilla Burson, the teenage daughter of Pastor Burson and his wife, Ada. She is the epitome of everything her evangelical father preaches: clean, white, blond and virginal.

"Perfect for readers of Rachel Harrison, Caitlin Starling and Sarah Penner, DARK SISTERS is gut-punchingly perfect. It is an antidote to the patriarchy, a galvanizing call to action for feminism, and a spellbinding reminder of the magic all around us."

Tying each generation together is the Path, the cult-like evangelical church that preaches not just the usual fire and brimstone, but very specific rules for women to follow: namely, promising their purity to their fathers until marriage, upon which it is gifted to their husbands, a precursor to a lifetime of servitude and subjugation.

Starting in 1750, it is clear that Hawthorne Springs does boast some natural magic of its own. It is seemingly concentrated in a horrifying, sprawling tree at the center of its forest, whose notches appear as screaming faces and whose sharp branches beckon alluringly at anyone who stares for too long. In search of sanctuary, Anne sees the tree as salvation and makes a blood oath to it, promising its safety as long as it promises hers. Before long, Anne and Florence are joined by other townsfolk escaping the critical eye of the church and looking to benefit from Anne’s command of natural remedies to all of their ailments.

But there is a single dissenter in Anne’s little commune. Heartbreakingly, it is her own daughter, a young lady already taken by the church’s teachings and desperate to fulfill her duty as a woman by marrying and birthing a child. Mother and daughter are two sides of the same coin: religious and secular, judicial law and natural law, darkness and light. At the heart of their dissolution comes a terrifying prophecy that will hang over the women of Hawthorne Springs for generations to come.

Of course, Mary and Camilla know nothing of this mother-daughter rift, or the accusations that came before it, or the men who forced its conclusion for no reason other than fear of the unknown and loss of control. What they do know, however, is the legend of the Dark Sisters. Each members in their own timelines of the Path, Mary and Camilla have been taught that to be a woman is to be a sin: a sin of an expanding waistline, a sin of a tempted man, a sin of not appearing docile and meek. When a woman in Hawthorne Springs sins, she is visited by the Dark Sisters: eyeless, long-haired, skeletal-fingered apparitions bound by their braided hair. With the first sighting of the Dark Sisters comes a mysterious illness that affects only women, filling their mouths with boils and their throats with blood until they can speak out of turn no more.

In Mary’s timeline, in the 1950s, the Dark Sisters are a dark shadow hanging over a time when she has stepped out of line. She follows her attraction to a shopgirl into dark corners and murky morals, which risks the life she has so carefully starved, pinned and trained herself for. Mary has heard rumors of other women drawing the sisters’ milky eyes, but it is not until she starts to learn the truth about the women who misbehave that the legend of the sisters becomes horrifyingly, chillingly real.

In Camilla’s time, life as the Pastor’s daughter has become too stifling, and Camilla is filled with self-harming rage every time she is forced to smile, pretend at her purity, and ignore the ways that the church’s wealth and glamour hide its darker aspects. When the sisters come for her, however, all the lies about her father’s teachings start to come to light, and her mother’s fears about the upcoming Purity Ball begin to sound less like the cries of a woman afraid of her daughter growing up and more like the PTSD of a victim. And Camilla refuses to be a victim. The legend of the Dark Sisters may have populated the nightmares of her mother and her grandmother before her, but if Camilla has anything to say about it, it stops now.

Tying together the lives of each of her protagonists, Kristi DeMeester invites readers into a haunting, atmospheric world where the eyes of the church are everywhere, the good men are no better than the bad, and women have been forced to turn cutthroat to survive. The magic system at the heart of this book is beautifully realized and fully fleshed out, as immersive as the best Southern Gothic fiction and as bitingly, searingly timely as a newspaper.

Writing across diverse timelines and social settings, DeMeester effortlessly brings each character to life. She tailors their main conflicts to the time but maintains a glimmering, scalding throughline of feminine rage that will speak to any woman who has ever had to smile as she was interrupted, make dinner while she was grieving, or otherwise tend to the wishes of men without ever being asked about her own.

Perfect for readers of Rachel Harrison, Caitlin Starling and Sarah Penner, DARK SISTERS is gut-punchingly perfect. It is an antidote to the patriarchy, a galvanizing call to action for feminism, and a spellbinding reminder of the magic all around us.