Postmortem by Jacob Michael King
Postmortem is a bleak little slice of Southern Gothic. It is a story of greed, violence and cosmic justice, told through the eyes of a boy whose father can raise the dead.
The unnamed father and son at its heart make a living by catering to desperate souls. Those brave enough—and with enough cash on hand—bring bodies for resurrection. Potential customers are warned, however, that the miracle they seek is against the natural order, and that there are spiritual forces to punish those who might supplant it.
The beautiful thing about Jacob Michael King’s Postmortem is that it is able to inhabit multiple genres and ideas simultaneously. Mixing genre-fiction elements such as mind reading, and raising the dead, it is uses these concepts to delve deep into the psyche of darkly disturbed ‘schemers.’ It’s a fascinating concept with a story of approachable, but damaged, people.
This is the kind of world that you can tell right off the bat, that it’s big and expansive, and you are only getting to see a small portion. The characters feel real, even amidst these supernatural elements. As the back copy text of Ray Bradbury’s I Feel The Body Electric says: this story is a mixture of the “natural and supernatural” and it does it with grace and deft skill.
As a personal aside, this is, hands down, one of my favorite stories that we have ever published. The exploration of the psychologically damaged characters, amidst the supernatural elements makes this story interesting, not just for one kind of person, but for all kinds of readers. King’s clever use of the supernatural makes this story an absolute delight to read.
