By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
June 6, 2020
Joseph Fink adapted Alice Isn’t Dead, his striking 2018 horror novel, from a podcast of the same name. Both book and podcast describe a harrowing series of journeys undertaken by Keisha Taylor, a chronically anxious woman who becomes a long-haul trucker after seeing her missing wife in the background of a television news shot.
Alice’s long disappearance is far from the strangest thing that will plague Keisha during the tale, which was written by the co-creator of the acclaimed Welcome to Night Vale fiction podcast. In the first chapter, a man with loose skin begins to consume someone, a sight that terrifies Keisha and sends her fleeing into the gathering night. But the “Thistle Man,” as she calls the monster based on its shirt, begins to stalk Keisha, setting up a confrontation she is powerless to avoid.
The Thistle Man turns out to be part of an array of shadowy forces preying upon Americans who happen to be unruly, unwary or unlucky. Keisha will discover a secret town, hidden bases, people possessing supernatural abilities and even a potential ally or two as she fights for her life and tries to repair an existence that seemed irreparably broken after her wife vanished.
Read the rest of this entry »