Description

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"With creeping claustrophobia and a filter of the surreal over lushly detailed lives, The Pecan Children captures both the magic and despair of trying to hold onto home when the world is determined to take it away from you." — Kiersten White, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Mister Magic

For fans of The Midnight Library and Demon Copperhead comes a breathtaking story of magical realism about two sisters, deeply tied to their small Southern town, fighting to break free of the darkness swallowing the land—and its endless cycle of pecan harvests—whole.

How long will you hold on when your world is gone?

In a small southern pecan town, the annual harvest is a time of both celebration and heartbreak. Even as families are forced to sell their orchards and move away, Lil Clearwater, keeper of a secret covenant with her land, swears she never will. When her twin Sasha returns to the dwindling town in hopes of reconnecting with the girl her heart never forgot, the sisters struggle to bridge their differences and share the immense burden of protecting their home from hungry forces intent on uprooting everything they love.

But there is rot hiding deep beneath the surface. Ghostly fires light up the night, and troubling local folklore is revealed to be all too true. Confronted with the phantoms of their pasts and the devastating threat to their future, the sisters come to the stark realization that in the kudzu-choked South, nothing is ever as it appears.

A story of the love between sisters, and an allegory of decay in small-town America, The Pecan Children walks the line between beauty and horror.

Also By Quinn Connor:

Cicadas Sing of Summer Graves

About the Author

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Quinn Connor is one pen in two hands: Robyn Barrow and Alexandra Cronin. An Arkansan and a Texan, when they aren’t writing, they’re arguing about the differences between queso and cheese dip. Both writers from young ages, Robyn and Alexandra met in college and together developed their unique co-writing voice. They are very thankful that no matter what, there’s always one other person in the world who cares about their characters as much as they do. Robyn is a PhD candidate in art history at the University of Pennsylvania. When she isn’t scavenging cheese and free wine at lectures, she spends her days happily exploring crumbling medieval churches. Alexandra is a North Texas transplant living in Brooklyn with her monstrous cat, Prosper, working in PR to fund her writing habit. In her free time, she can be found exploring the city for a new favorite restaurant, topping off her tea, and amassing a collection of winter coats. Unless Robyn is trekking in Iceland, or Alexandra is chasing down rumors of homemade pasta in Park Slope, they write every day. It’s their preferred form of conversation.

Praise For…

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"A sultry Southern gothic…With lyrical prose and a rich seam of folklore, Connor artfully braids satisfying mystery and romance subplots, creating an abiding sense of unease. This story of crumbling grandeur and family secrets will leave readers hungry for more." — Publishers Weekly

"Tangled in the twisted roots of where the past and present meet, The Pecan Children is a haunting story of survival, limned with touches of magic. Fans of Delia Owens and Alix E. Harrow will enjoy this beautifully written, modern-day southern gothic wrapped in pecan vines, heartache, and hope." — Heather Webber, USA Today bestselling author of Midnight at the Blackbird Café

"With creeping claustrophobia and a filter of the surreal over lushly detailed lives, The Pecan Children captures both the magic and despair of trying to hold onto home when the world is determined to take it away from you." — Kiersten White, #1 NYT bestselling author of Mister Magic

"With lyricism that commands attention, The Pecan Children offers a soulful exploration of the familial on an untamed and lush stage of what remains of the gathering commons." — Monica Brashears, author of House of Cotton

"Part gothic, part magical, part mysterious, The Pecan Children is steeped in atmosphere and place. A haunting and beautiful story about forgotten people and declining places. A hopeful tale that will pull you in like kudzu and hold you spellbound. An engaging page-turner!" — Terah Shelton Harris, author of One Summer in Savannah

"Quietly suspenseful, mysterious, and magical, The Pecan Children is about forgotten places and the people who stay behind. We are transported to a rural Arkansas town in decline, being sold off parcel by parcel, run by its annual pecan harvest, and about to be swallowed up by a lurking darkness—a place that could be and reminds us of so many places across America. An intricately woven narrative that expertly juggles all its moving pieces, Quinn Connor shows us an American South haunted by a history buried long ago and teaches us that the past is never really forgotten." — E.M. Tran, author of Daughters of the New Year

"Cleverly ensnaring their reader like vines of southern kudzu, the emotional and temporal fractals in The Pecan Children make for an eerie, delicious book about loyalty, loss, and the haunting nature of unsated want. It is unlike anything I have ever read before; singular and seductive." — Katie Lattari, author of Dark Things I Adore

"The Pecan Children is a revelation in ingenuity: lyrical, compelling and unexpected. A haunting tale that pays homage to a disappearing past. A wishful story where the sanctity and sanctuary of home gets trapped in a loop and becomes fractured. There are splintered visions of what was and what is and the story ends up giving us heroes but no fairytale ending. Readers will be drawn to the heartbreak of this work about a bygone era that is lost except in remembering. What a thoroughly mesmerizing read!" — Leah Weiss, author of If the Creek Don't Rise

"This suspenseful, eerie ode to doomed Southern towns lulled me into a spell with its atmospheric beauty, then had me gasping when I realized what was happening. Quinn Connor has created an iconic addition to the canon of stories about hometowns and the fearful, hopeful hold they have over us. Like fast-growing kudzu, The Pecan Children wraps itself tightly around your heart...at some point, you'll try to glance up from these pages and find yourself transfixed instead." — Sara Flannery Murphy, author of The Wonder State

"A Southern Gothic, pecan-scented fever dream of a novel. Beautiful, haunting, and very unique." — Ann Dávila Cardinal, author of We Need No Wings

"Quinn Connor viscerally portrays the quiet claustrophobia of a dying rural town, and that's just the beginning. An atmospheric ghost story where nothing is quite as it seems, The Pecan Children is delicious and sinister, and Southern Gothic right down to its roots." — Haley Harrigan, author of Secrets of Southern Girls