This Republic of Blood: Four American Folk Horror Novellas

Four novellas. Four moments in American history. One legacy of blood.

In the shadows of America's past-along remote frontiers, in the aftermath of war, across contested western territories, and deep in the mountains-something waits.

This Republic of Blood is a collection of four atmospheric folk horror novellas that explore the dark spaces where history, faith, and violence intersect. Rooted in real historical settings and traditions, these stories reveal the supernatural forces that emerge when civilization begins to fracture.

The Borderlands
In the early nineteenth-century Pacific Northwest, a remote trading outpost struggles to maintain order at the edge of empire. When a young nun arrives on a mission of mercy, her faith is tested by the uncaring reality of the wilderness-and an entity ready to prey upon the fragile souls of those who claim to bring civilization.

Ghosts of Andersonville
When a dead soldier's journal carries the horrors of Andersonville beyond the grave, Pinkerton agent Judah Morgan is drawn into a bloody hunt across the shattered postwar South. With a haunted survivor and a mad former prison guard in tow, he rides toward the ruins of the camp where the dead demand their final due.

Manifest
In 1868, a wagon train limps into an isolated military post on the western frontier, the survivors telling tales of unexplained events. Soon, tensions rise between soldiers, settlers, freedmen, and the Shoshone, which threatens to break the fragile illusion of civilization. As religious, military, indigenous, and economic forces struggle for control, something hungry waits in the shadows.

The Black Vein
In a West Virginia company town where the coal company controls the mines, the houses, and the law, miner and war veteran Ezra Young struggles to maintain much-needed stability as forces conspire to bring chaos to the community. When a mysterious English woman and her physician companion bring a traveling medicine show to town, their influence begins to spread through the community. As labor tensions mount and loyalties fracture, the town discovers that exploitation attracts predators-and not all of them are human.

Blending historical realism with slow-burning dread, This Republic of Blood draws on the traditions of American Gothic and literary folk horror to examine the violence woven into the nation's past. These stories reveal a darker history-one where the dead remember, the land keeps its secrets, and the cost of progress is written in blood.

Perfect for readers of Stephen Graham Jones, John Langan, and Michael McDowell, this collection offers a haunting journey through the forgotten corners of American history.