{"id":20760,"date":"2025-05-26T19:58:34","date_gmt":"2025-05-26T23:58:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=20760"},"modified":"2025-05-26T19:58:34","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T23:58:34","slug":"the-chill-by-scott-carson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=20760","title":{"rendered":"‘The Chill,’ by Scott Carson"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n

The day was dull and gray but the leaves were a brilliant assortment of orange, yellow, and red. A long, lovely summer with its throat cut.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Long ago,<\/strong> the town of Galesburg, in the Catskill Mountains of New York state, was taken by eminent domain and drowned under what became the Chilewaukee Reservoir (popularly known as \u201cThe Chill<\/a><\/em>\u201d). The purpose was to provide backup water for the City of New York. The residents, fiercely superstitious folk, had warned the planners and engineers that the land there was dangerous, and they had sealed their warnings with violence and fire. But the dam was built and has stood ever since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gillian Mathers is a descendant of the Galesburg folk. She was raised by her grandmother near the reservoir, but her father fetched her to the city after the grandmother\u2019s disappearance. Somehow Gillian felt compelled to come back, though, and now she\u2019s on the water authority police force, guarding the man-made lake where her ancestors are buried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aaron Ellsworth is the son of the county sheriff. He once set his heart on being on a Coast Guard rescue crew, but he washed out in training. Now he\u2019s a ne\u2019er-do-well, shiftless, on the road to criminal life. Until the day he accidentally kills a man at the dam, but then the same man reappears out of the water, apparently uninjured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Old prophecies are beginning to come true. Unseen, unknown forces are at work under the earth. And Gillian is feeling the pull of her grandmother\u2019s earliest lessons \u2013 of the old faith of Galesburg, and the sacrifices it demands. Meanwhile, the rain falls, threatening to overwhelm the old dam, and the people downstream have no idea what danger they\u2019re in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like all Scott Carson novels, The Chill <\/em>is very well written. I thought of Dean Koontz as I read, though I guess the style and subject matter are closer to Stephen King. I don\u2019t like horror as a genre generally, though I do like Koontz, and The Chill<\/em> seems to bear some of Koontz\u2019s essential optimism. There are even faint echoes of Christianity: \u201cSacrifice is about salvation, Mrs. Baerga had said. Not vengeance. Whoever told you that story used the wrong word. Lots of people would die for family, honey. But how many would die for a stranger?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I enjoyed The Chill<\/em>. Not as much as I liked Carson\u2019s Lost Man\u2019s Lane<\/em>, but it\u2019s quite good of its kind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The day was dull and gray but the leaves were a brilliant assortment of orange, yellow, and red. A long, lovely summer with its throat cut. Long ago, the town of Galesburg, in the Catskill Mountains of New York state, was taken by eminent domain and drowned under what became the Chilewaukee Reservoir (popularly known … Continue reading ‘The Chill,’ by Scott Carson<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[5543,5561],"class_list":["post-20760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-scott-carson","tag-the-chill"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20760"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20763,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20760\/revisions\/20763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}