Letters from the Well in the Season of the Ghosts

Texas Pentagraph #3

by Raymond St. Elmo

Maddy Rupert has a summer job in her dull home town of Hell, Texas. Assisting at the post office, known for receiving very strange letters. People around the world write to the dead, sending last laughs and sad 'told you so's. Maddy's a quiet kid; if grownups want to pay her to drop the letters down a well shaft, she'll nod her head and get it done. An easy, dull summer... till letters start coming up from the well. Addressed to Maddy Rupert.

Genres: Fantasy, Magical Realism

326 pages, Paperback

Published December 21, 2020

Reviews

[Lukasz · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5 rounded up. Because reasons.

“This here is Hell, Texas. Dullest blister on the planet’s ass. Can’t blame the local kids for getting excited, acting silly when a bit of ground goes ‘pop'.”

Hard to disagree. Nothing happens in Hell, Texas. Getting wild in the middle of nowhere presents its difficulties but Hell's teenagers are a decent sort. Maddy, for example, starts a summer job at the local post office. Selling stamps, sorting mail, dealing with clients trying to recover letters sent to dead people in moments of deep emotion and honesty. Such letters usually end deep down in a local well.

Things get interesting when certain Tatterpatch starts writing to Maddy from the bottom of the earth in the abattoir below existence where fire and worm consume everything except that which perishes not. It seems he wants to learn about s'mores, and go with her to the mid-summer dance.

Things get even more interesting when you meet a band of (possibly) cannibal gypsies and when Maddy's "friends" fool with the well unknowingly summoning something hungry and dangerous.

I love St. Elmo's writing and I had no doubts I would enjoy his newest book. But I'm surprised at how much I did. This book is awesome, possibly his best yet*. It's both funny and serious, light and dark, emotionally engaged but humorously detached. It accepts that life sucks but instead of finding new ways to destroy everything characters touch and love, it focuses on the joy of discovery (of life, friendships, parenthood, and more).

I would describe it as a slice of life novel laced with comedy, teenage drama, horror, and coming-of-age arc. Not to forget plenty of deeper thoughts on life and witty remarks. It's a book you pick up and read when you’re tired and sad, or when you simply want to relax. It offers a balanced mix of imaginative worldbuilding, witty prose, subtle humor**, and decent people doing their best.

The plot of Letters from the Well in the Season of the Ghosts*** is both sprawling and minimalist. Most of the book is dedicated to Hell's teenager's everyday life, a (possible) murder investigation, and mysterious Tatterpatch breaking to our reality. Day after day Maddy, and her peers, face teenage problems, including low self-esteem, boredom, and insecurities, and yet somehow this manages to be endlessly intriguing. While I could have read about their lives forever, St. Elmo has something for readers who seek a feeling of the build-up towards the main event.

Maddy and her freakishly big and ugly father are fantastic protagonists. Maddy leads a double life, as an unnoticed, shy girl in everyday life and as a leather-clad Valentine the Bard admired by her online guild in virtual reality. As expected, borders between realities start to blur and dissolve so that madness can ensue. Everyone likes Rupert, Maddy's father. He's huge, ugly, and scary but he's also the best dad and the best Sheriff. Not to denigrate the Betty and Wulf, the sheriffs from neighboring cities, but where they make you laugh or roll your eyes, Rupert does all of it better. Plus, parents will easily relate to his single-parent concerns:

He wondered where she’d found that weird cloak. And the damned sheath knife. He wondered more where his lonely daughter had gotten four sudden friends that summoned her to midnight adventure. He wondered very much what story occurred. But more than anything, he wondered if he should follow. Every possible crime, death, depravity and delinquency of adolescent insanity came to his lawman mind, complete with correct numeric coding for state prosecution and autopsy.

St. Elmo's prose is elegant, imaginative, and witty and it never fails to impress. I consider reading it a treat. It's effortless and smooth and somehow manages to convey a deep understanding of life with humor and compassion (and occasional self-deprecation).

My only nitpick is rather technical and I expect most readers won't care. In a few places, the narration falls victim to head-hopping, a thing grumpy book reviewers are conditioned to sniff from far away. And when it happens in a single paragraph, things get tricky. Admittedly, though, the vignettes of inner thoughts of non-POV characters are humorous. That said, I would prefer to see them thrown deep, deep down into the well.

Other than that, I have no issues with the story and I loved it. I rounded the score up because as soon as I finished it I had the urge to immediately start reading it again from the beginning. I vigorously recommend it, and I urge you not to pay any attention to its current cover.

* Debatable, of course, but it's the one that's easiest to follow and most linear. And this makes it compulsively readable.

** I used to love humorous writing. Nowadays I rarely connect with it. I hope it has more to do with writers trying too hard to be funny than with me getting old and grumpy. St. Elmo writes subtle humor, living a lot to the imagination and never crude or gross.

*** Is Mr. St. Elmo trying to take the crown of the creator of the longest titles from Benedict Patrick? Possible. Texans are like that.

[Steve Kimmins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. No, really, wow. The finest unplanned read I’ve stumbled upon in ages.

A story set in a small Texas town, with just the one traffic light. This fictional town is named Hell. But it’s rather a dull place where 15 year old Maddy, during her summer job at the post office, finds one routine task is to take the mail sent to Hell, from all over and mostly bitter, sad, mocking letters, and dump them down the dried up town well. I’ll say no more on the plot details other than there are consequences for dumping mail, intended for that other Hell, down a well…

The surprising thing for me isn’t just this intriguing story but the quality of the writing. It is stunning. Describing the dullness of small town life and its inhabitants in such a way as I could have highlighted a memorable paragraph or observational sentence from almost every other page.

The characters are excellent; Maddy and her father, the town sheriff (and his colleagues from nearby towns), Maddy’s school chums, the grumpy postmaster, and so many more. There’s a cat too. Plenty of youngsters in the story and for once, as a grumpy older reader, I was pleased to find them to be three dimensional characters. I’ve seen it labelled ‘coming of age’ - well, maybe to a degree, but not a coming of age trope in sight!
The younger characters partly socialise through an online role playing computer game, not dissimilar to Dungeons and Dragons. Not my scene normally, but I enjoyed the way the fake supernatural is blended with the real stuff that gradually develops.

Underlying all this is the development of the supernatural strand to the story, starting with mysterious travelling folk outside town, leading to a climax I enjoyed.

This isn’t a horror story as such. Creepy, in parts, for sure. But also some gentle humour. I’ve seen the book catalogued as ‘magical realism’ and in my ignorance of the proper genre definitions that seems reasonable to me. Outside of my narrower fantasy and SciFi reading to some degree, but a close relation.

I really enjoyed the read. Savouring the delightful prose (don’t rush it!) and enjoying the gradual development and escalation in the story. Treat yourself to it for a good summer read…
Didn’t doubt this’d be a 5* rating from me, from about the 20% mark. I’m going to look at this self published author’s back catalogue.

Incidentally, self published??! If I were a publisher I’d be queuing up to offer this author a deal.

EDIT: Now gets a high approval rating from my wife, not on GR. She doesn’t often read the fantasy books I read. And she sometimes reads quite sophisticated books!

[Rob Gregson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was reading this at the very witching time of night, as the clock struck midnight on New Year's Eve. Better that than letting off fireworks and frightening the cats. And a story about Hell seemed a fitting way to end 2020.

His titles might be longer than some novels, but Raymond St Elmo is annoyingly talented. Excellent prose and thought-provoking philosophy flow easily from him. I suspect even his refrigerator notes are thoroughly absorbing. I've said much the same about several of his other works (yes, I'm a fan) and here we see it proven again. A tale of ghosts and mystery, and the adventures of characters in two Hells - one above ground and one below.

It's a story in which Hell itself really does breathe out contagion to this world (which is always a foolproof recipe for fun) and there's plenty of action to please all those who enjoyed the breathless pace of the 'Five Clans' series. But it's certainly no 'paint by numbers' horror; it also delivers bags of humour and some wonderfully expressed insights into the trials of adolescence, parental love and the pains of the human condition. Whether you read it for the wit, the thoughtfulness or the simple joy of its language, it's an excellent read.

[Akje · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was reading something else when I discovered Raymond St. Elmo had released a new book, so I dropped whatever it was─some timeless, Nobel winning classic of no comparative importance; the title slips my mind now. On a related side note, why the hell do I bother following authors on you, Amazon, when you never tell me they have new works out?! I thought the whole point was so you'd send me an email or something, maybe? Argh. (ﾉ｀□´)ﾉ⌒uozɐɯ∀

Never mind. While I just couldn't get into the Tartan series─too much action/adventure for me─this author is still an autobuy, and Letters from the Well doesn't disappoint. I read it in one day; it's that addicting, and I'm so looking forward to the coming sequels. I still don't understand why I keep hearing of his new works from Jim Heter's reviews instead of Oprah or the NY Times Bestseller List, but the world seems a little fucked up right now so I'll assume that's probably just another sign of the approaching Apocalypse.

I know this author insists he doesn't write literary fiction, but I always find something distinctly profound in all his books. If they're not litfic, they're certainly upmarket. Definitely deeper than the average young adult novel. This one centers on a timid teen who ultimately falls in love with a fallen angel in Hell. Texas. Not that one in Michigan. If you liked Stations of the Angels I think you'll like this book. It has the same message in the end that life is hell so you may as well party with whatever friends you can dig up. Is there anything, really, more truly profound than that? Also it's so true about the batons at majorette camp. I used to kill three or four people a year with mine. And omg don't ask about color guard. Dayam, no. ヽ(ﾟДﾟ)ﾉ

[Maurice Arh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a growing up/coming-out-of-her-shell story about a girl called Maddy from a small rural town in Texas. Normally teenage girls don’t have such a good time of it in the horror genre, but this is far from your usual slaughter fest. Rather, it occupies the borderlands between horror, role-playing games, and YA fiction – which was already pretty expansive territory even before Ray got his hands on it. It is a story in which the world goes temporarily crazy while the people in it stay resolutely real, even the ones who aren’t really people. And even though, strictly speaking, it is Maddy and her school friends who are the spawn of Hell.
It all makes perfect sense in the book.
As ever, it all bounces along in the unique St Elmo style, which means that, like all Ray’s other books, it is a joy to read.

[Hugo Bernard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story is so much fun, reminiscent of the joys of watching the Goonies for the first time. Sometimes, I could have mistaken this novel to be one from Neil Gaiman or, to a lesser degree, of Poe, but the madness and humour in Letters from Hell is uniquely Raymond’s.

The writing is always crisp and clear, but on many occasions it is remarkable. Take the scene where a letter travels into the lower realms of Hell, Texas. The quality and vividness of the description is perfect, clear like a magical scene in a PIXAR movie. The letters sent to Maddy also shine with a beautiful lyrical style, gems to read several times.

Highly recommended.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's like "Casablanca" if Rick was a teenage girl working in a post office in a Podunk Texas town, and Ilsa were a half-demon hell spawn with a heart of stone clawing its way up into our world from the deepest pits of hell. Loved it.

[Jim Heter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recently I read a book entitled simply "The Well".
Sound mysterious enough for you?
That book had everything.
A tall, ugly, Texas sheriff with a six-gun on his hip.
A post office which serves as a repository for letters addressed to Hell.
A gypsy wagon, complete with gypsies.
A shy maiden who is secretly a Bard of Elfland.
And that only scratches the surface.

The book we are previewing here could be a lot like that one. If so I'm definitely tempted. Anything written by the magical St. Elmo is a must read for me.

[Greg Meritt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, this just might be Raymond St Elmo's best work yet. Welcome to Hell, Texas, where we meet Maddy, a fifteen-year-old girl who goes to work at the local Post Office. Boring job: sorting mail, selling stamps and, after a year, sending letters with no return address to the "dead letter box." Said "dead letter box" is the bottom of deep well. But then Maddy receives her own letter from deep in the bowels of the earth. Perhaps she will get to attend the mid-summer dance after all:

"I would like to go with you to the mid-summer dance. I am learning how to dance. Also to write letters and to walk. I was a stone. I was a stone in the base of a pillar. A pillar at the bottom of the earth."

Interesting. Fun. Creepy.

Oh, and there's a band of gypsies. And let's not forget about Rupert, Maddy's father and sheriff who, like most parents, worries about his daughter: Wonders what she's doing. Where did she find these new friends? Should he follow her? Questions all parents ask themselves at one time or another.

Letters from the Well in the Season of the Ghosts is a fun read that takes us on a coming-of-age journey of love, horror, parenting, and just plain teenage angst.

Raymond St Elmo paints character portaits with his prose. His writing is intelligent, humorous, insightful, caring, bold and...fresh!

Highly recommended reading -

[Mike Futcher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Letters from the Well in the Season of the Ghosts, like much of author Raymond St. Elmo's excellent writing, finds that sweet spot where intelligent literature and literature-as-entertainment meet and harmonise. It combines the peculiarity and lightness of the best of Pratchett and Gaiman with an underlying steely intelligence, and when the latter reveals itself overtly in some unique philosophical moments (such as Tatterpatch's conversation with Maddy on page 313 about the various levels of Hell), it reinforces the sense that this author is one to trust. It's heartening – and inspiring – that there's a self-published author out there creating stories of this quality.

Of the numerous books I've read from St. Elmo so far, Letters from the Well initially seemed the least promising. Its concept was a good one, but less kaleidoscopic than some of his other books: a small town called Hell drops letters addressed to the other Hell down a local well, where they are forgotten about… until one is answered. But despite the appeal and mystery of this, I always have my guard up when the protagonist of a story is a 15-year-old girl. Such stories always threaten to put the 'YA' in 'yawn'.

Happily, Letters from the Well proves anything but, and it's a fun mix of action, adventure, fantasy and humour – with those afore-mentioned rebars of steely intelligence to stop me from feeling too guilty about enjoying a light adventure about teenagers. The characters are appealing, with even the bit-part players granted their depth, and the writing is light and witty. Small-town America is always a charming setting, and when things began to go from Pratchett-weird to eldritch-weird, the novel reminded me a bit of Stranger Things. St. Elmo is too much of an original for that comparison to be anything other than a lazy one, but it's a happy one nonetheless.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was so much fun! I genuinely laughed out loud in a couple of places and thoroughly enjoyed the plot, the characters and the authors descriptive language. An excellent read.
….Oh and now I want to learn how to play Dungeons and Dragons. 🐉

[Set Sytes · Rating 5 out of 5]

"To Madeline Rupert

I would like to go with you to the mid-summer dance. I am learning how to dance. Also how to write letters and how to walk. I was a stone. A stone at the bottom of the in the base of a pillar. A pillar at the bottom of the earth. At the bottom of the earth in the abattoir below existence where fire and worm consume all except that which perishes not. There among the remains of angels and devils and monsters. There in the fragments of broken war machines of the gods. There with the stones. I was a stone. A stone at the base of the pillar of the world."

I'd been meaning to read a book by resident Texan madman St Elmo for ages. This book had been recommended to me by my quartermaster, and proved an engaging oddity that was continually changing my neural pathways with how best to take its storytelling, themes and genres on board. It flitted naturalistically between small town drama, magical realism, YA coming-of-age, bizarre romance, supernatural horror, and eccentricities that were remarkably restrained considering the author. And D&D., which was, for me, the weirdest element. I had very minor trouble getting my head around the found-family D&D aspects, but I think others will love it.

Powering all this was a brilliant core concept. There is a well, where one can send letters to Hell. Some teenagers send a letter on behalf of another girl (our main protag, Maddy), asking whoever receives it to go with her to the school summer dance.

The letter goes very, very, VERY far down.

And something begins to come up.

And writes letters back as it does. These parts were definitely my favourite of the novel - reading the perceptions of this thing as it rose up through the demonic realms (and I would've loved more of this explored - alas, this would've been a different story). I am a sucker for any portrayals of Hell in anything, and St Elmo's felt both aligned with my own aesthetic fascinations, and uniquely considered. St Elmo's idea of the separations between Hell, our world, and Heaven, are blasphemously philosophical. There are always challenges, and one can always rise higher.

This book carries itself is through the prose. St. Elmo's writing is varied yet cohesive. Sometimes terse, direct and rough. Staccato. Then it flows, seamlessly, through flourishes of phrase, poetic descriptions, existential, emotional, meditative reflections. Then back to blunt, no nonsense, small-town Texan. There are ways St Elmo has of putting things that seem so idiosyncratic that I already feel I could identify a St Elmo work without being told the author.

Given said author, who could himself make a convincing case why he should be sent to an asylum, I really didn't know what to expect of his books. They could've well been garbled stream of consciousness, or all in Plutonian binary, or simply huge hand drawn pictures of organic monstrosities staring at the reader while pointing insistently at cypher-riddled gateways. What I got, to my surprise, was a strange, inventive, but tamed, almost responsible story constructed by someone who has clearly honed his craft to a fine shiny polish.

0/10, story made far too much sense.*


* Raymond St. Elmo has just materialised, looming, behind me, and is currently darkly drawling for me to clarify that this rating should not be taken seriously, and also, buy his books.

[Nithuir · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a truly delightful entry in the Texas Pentagraph. These books do not get anywhere near the attention they deserve.

[Yariv · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a pleasant surprise!
Strange & original but also funny with plenty of nice small observations on humans, life & stuff.

The first half reminded me a bit of reading Norman Prentiss’s “Odd Adventures with your other father” . Not that they have much in common - well , actually both features a single parent dealing with an adolescent daughter - but mostly because both doesn’t seem to fit to any category, and both , sadly, are criminally underrated.
The second half seemed to take a more familiar path but then it turns it upside down, so in the end I can say that it is unlike anything I’ve read.

Thanks for Lokasz for pushing this guy forward. There is a good chance I would never have heard of him if he weren’t that persistent :)
Really enjoyed it.
8.5/10
Will check more of his

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wasn't sure how this series would be after learning that each book is it's own mostly contained story. The first two were great, but this one took things up a notch. I loved the story, and the author does a really good job of making each place feel alive. What I don't love is reading about teenage breasts and hips, especially when noticed by the father. Ick. There are other ways to talk about young teens growing up.

Thats just a small part of the whole, though. I am really looking forward to the last two books in this series.

[Marcin · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The abattoir beneath existence has neither gate nor wall"
This sentence made this my favourite book by Mr St. Elmo.
There are more like this in this small book of fantasy, D&D, with horror, comedy, and mystery elements.