The Underneath

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With the assurance and grace of her acclaimed novels, Melanie Finn returns with a precisely layered and tense literary thriller. The story follows Kay Ward, a former journalist grappling with the challenges of motherhood. She and her family rent a quaint Vermont farmhouse for the summer, hoping to disconnect from their work-driven lives—particularly Kay's intense pursuit of a genocidal leader known as General Christmas during her pregnancy. Their goal is to repair their shaky marriage. However, when Kay's husband is unexpectedly called away, she discovers a mysterious crawlspace in the rental, featuring unsettling writing on the walls. This discovery, along with other peculiarities in the house, leads her to suspect something terrible happened to its previous owners. Her investigation brings her into contact with Ben Comeau, a local logger with a complicated and violent past. A product of the foster system, Ben struggles to overcome his circumstances while trying to help an abused child whose mother is too incapacitated to care for him. The narrative intelligently explores themes of violence—both personal and social—and questions whether violence can ever be justified.