When we first meet Henry Browning in 1899, he is an impoverished 7-year-old adept at fixing mechanical devices. Yet he is childlike enough to believe that the shadows on his bedroom wall — cast by moonlight and tree branches thrashing in the wind — are the long hair of his dead mother and her arms reaching for him. Henry’s father, George, is a penniless but talented day laborer. Fortunately, it isn’t long before George’s skill and hard work at a lumber mill attract the approval of its owner, Mr. Brympton, a college professor who offers him a maintenance position at his country estate. Partly due to being charmed by Henry’s intellectual curiosity, Brympton also offers father and son lodging. The good-hearted professor becomes Henry’s mentor and surrogate father when George is murdered.

The tone of Brian Kaufman’s A SHADOW MELODY ranges from light to dark, including a seance more than 20 years later that is both humorous and frightful for Harry’s lovely young housekeeper and scientific assistant, Elizabeth Rose. The story’s frigid winter setting is by turns magical (Harry and Elizabeth delight in conversation during snowy walks) and menacing (Elizabeth flees her abusive parents’ home during a blizzard). Historical events woven into its melancholy include two pandemics (cholera and the Spanish flu), World War I, and the paranormal experimentation of Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. The voices from beyond that Harry encounters in his own experiments vary from shrill and demanding to lost and terrified. Add all these elements together and a gothic pastoral emerges.

Kaufman’s writing is crisp and his characters vivid, such as Elizabeth’s sharp-tongued mother. Constance Rose is built like a “human spindle” and is as prickly as the sewing needles she wields in a threatening way. She forces Elizabeth to turn over all of her earnings. Although jovial when conscious, Elizabeth’s drunken, rotund father does little to earn his keep or stand up for his daughter. Harry marvels at the miracle of their giving birth to a daughter who is as clever, generous, kind, and industrious as she is pretty.

Not all of Kaufman’s work includes horror (one example is the baseball novel The Fat Lady’s Low, Sad Song). However, as the author once stated in an interview with Underground Book Reviews, he takes an “oblique” approach to the genre by striving for “a mix of eerie confusion and melancholy.” A SHADOW MELODY achieves that goal and tops it with true terror.

Brian Kaufman successfully melds historical fiction and horror in A SHADOW MELODY, a moody pastoral tale with a creepy paranormal conclusion.

~Alicia Rudnicki for IndieReader