STARRED Book Review: Sundown in San Ojuela

Reviewed by Andrea Marks-Joseph

An intimate, poetic gothic horror where murder, mythology and family drama intertwine

M.M. Olivas has written an unforgettable book that you’ll only want to remember with the lights on. Atmospheric is an understatement. This story will be swirling around your head like fallen leaves circling a cemetery in the cool air of night. You’ll feel a chill on the back of your neck and remember the detached hand, the men who climbed out from dark corners, the terrified children forced to bring new victims to feed their personal monster. You’ll remember the young woman who spent years wandering through her life questioning the moral consequences of having lost her soul and going on living. 

From the panic-inducing prologue to the disturbing confessions that make up its shocking twists, Sundown in San Ojuela reads like a vicious beast whose claws are flying through the air, their sharpness and strength constantly threatening to drag through your skin from every direction.

In the book’s opening, we meet a queer boy who runs away from home. Then we meet a boy he connects with at a gas station. It’s charming and dreamlike and sweetly queer, until suddenly it isn’t any of that at all. The book very quickly turns sour; its desperately, urgently horrific truth—all brutality, terror, and gore—is bright and hot and searing. This rhythm repeats itself throughout the novel.

“Yes, the famous sisters from your town’s stupid little urban legend. We’re back. We survived.”

The novel follows the women who go back to their historic family home known as Coyote House (“Casa Coyotl”) after their aunt dies, for the funeral and to “take stock of the estate.” The estate, and the house in particular, is haunted by memories from their childhoods that they’ve long repressed or dismissed as imagined.

There’s so much truth to the way M.M. Olivas writes the sisterly arguments and casual loaded banter, but there’s an ever present dark, layered trauma pressing in on their presence in this home. (“Your body begins to shiver. You can see it at a distance from this place you’ve sunk to.”) The women in this story feel a combined duty and sense of being “compelled to find out if their house was supernaturally haunted or just another place where terrible things had happened.” Could it possibly be both? Almost every conversation and interaction is coupled with a feeling that you can see the sharp tangled edges of each person, hooking into the skin and bones of those around them, drawing blood to the surface.

We come to learn that this novel is a welcome home for “places could be haunted with more than just ghosts: arguments, violence, empty bourbon bottles, slurs that trapped bodies between their letters.” We bear witness to the cycles of abuse and circles of silence that protect violent men and the victims of their coordinated acts who become accomplices in perpetuating his most vicious, traumatizing crimes against children: “The sacrifices have been increasing with each year and every month. You’ve noticed how a fresh corpse’s blood no longer refreshes Samuel like it used to, how you’ve needed to search for more prey more often.”

It’s an unsettling reading experience, feeling the weight of the devastating cycle of abuse, witnessing the harrowing acts that took place on those very floorboards, and never quite feeling like they’ll be able to overcome the evil surrounding them.

This story is less linear—we follow various characters throughout their tortured moments in their lives, flashing back between their first encounters with the house and its tortured beings, and then returning to the present day where there are mysteries to be solved and emotional closure to be found—and more illustrated roadmap along the route of an unsettling experience.

Sundown in San Ojuela is a story uncovering and dismantling the horrors that took place inside and surrounding the house. The novel reads as gothic fiction for fans of literary fiction: the prose lyrical and phrasing breathtaking; the story told through a writing style where internal monologue and direct quotes from intimate conversations collide. I appreciated the unexpected moments of community connection and offbeat humor that catch readers off guard (Someone tells the girls “Sorry. He’s had a bit to drink.” And Mary tilts her head in response: “It’s boba, though?”). Each of them served as a relief from the creeping horrors, reminding you of the tender, human cost of the worst-fears-come-to-fruition flowing freely throughout. 

Multiple queer characters grace the pages of Sundown in San Ojuela, all of them written with vulnerability and ambition, their precious, delicate hearts on their sleeves. There’s a brief but lovely scene late in the book that’s worth noting for its wonderful depiction of continuous informed consent when two teenage girls find a private room in the middle of a party. The clarity and authenticity in the way these characters are written are a comfort, in the same way seeing yourself represented on the page always is.

There’s kindness and beauty and love and loneliness in this book, but the queer characters rarely find more than a hint of it. “Another dead, brown body,” author M.M. Olivas wrote; another queer person brutally traumatized, I thought. There’s a darkness to this story that represents a very real experience for queer people in small towns and bigoted communities globally, but the heavy emotion surrounding queer discrimination and danger also weighs it down.

Readers who have years of their life and boxes of their childhood (in both physical form and memories) hastily packed into drawers they never want to open will find understanding in this story. Sundown in San Ojuela confronts the sense of futility that comes with trying to end a generations-long, deeply embedded cycle of abuse: “Maybe we don’t have to do anything… Maybe we can just go home once the funeral is done. No one’s ever going to believe us.”

Readers of color especially will recognize the guilt that accompanies thinking about ancestors’ regrets, their hopes and fears, and feeling like you won’t satisfy their dreams for you. There’s a strong running theme (in both the contemporary storyline and the more spiritual aspects of the narrative, told through cultural references, twisted fairytales, and Spanish phrases) of being overwhelmed by the emotional inheritance of being indigenous. This story asks who we are when we choose not to believe the legends and lore our elders spoke of, and what it means for our sense of reality when, much later in life, we discover those stories may have been true all along.

“Elizabeth felt cold around her wrists where purple fingerprints bloomed on her flesh. They don’t touch you. Ghosts never touch you. But Elizabeth knew that hand, even if she hadn’t felt it in years.”

Content warnings: This novel includes scenes that feature, discuss, and explore racial discrimination; police brutality; homophobic beliefs and acts, including slurs, violence, and bullying; suicide; gruesome depictions of murder; and scenes that precede and describe horrific child and domestic abuse.

Sundown in San Ojuela’s conclusion made my heart feel dark and heavy, slowly sinking as if I stepped into the thick sludge of a decaying pond, and yet strangely hopeful in a way that had the corners of my mouth pull up into a wide smile despite the trepidation. I’ll be thinking of phrases like “the wind is spanking shutters,” and “the night slips out of you in ribbons” forever, just as I will this description: “I shower in frigid water and the droplets are beaks pecking my back.” I’d recommend this story for anyone who loves gothic horror, family sagas, and mesmerizing writing of traumatic experiences. 

While it doesn’t feel like a natural pairing, the life-giving secret meetings of teenagers with desires and fears in common reminded me of K. Ancrum’s Icarus. The tumultuous emotions that come with confronting your past by returning to a place that harbors so much of your hidden pain, and the way the women are forced to witness the house’s lasting impact on the community, reminded me of Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects. Both these novels hold a special place in my heart, for their writing styles and breathtaking storylines that capture what it means to be family, and to be human, so my recommendation comes from a place of genuine adoration.

Sundown in San Ojuela is so worth reading, but beware: you won’t ever forget it.

Thank you for reading Andrea Marks-Joseph’s book review of Sundown in San Ojuela by M.M. Olivas! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post STARRED Book Review: Sundown in San Ojuela appeared first on Independent Book Review.