The Dark Walk Forward

The Dark Walk Forward by John S. McFarland

The first story collection from Ste. Odile

The small town of Ste. Odile in America has experienced the Great War in ways that no one should ever have to endure.

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Doctors must tend to births and deaths that make their most difficult cases seem benign.

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An 1880s schoolteacher is faced with the worst blizzard of her time and must save the children under her charge.

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A young man searches for his father in the abandoned orphanage the older man owns... and both know they will despair at what they find.

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A primitive woman experiences colonization and the stereotypes of men, yet finds her own method of retribution.

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John S. McFarland has slogged through his characters' woes and woven them into sweetly emotional yet acutely distressing tales. We as readers are forced to understand the pain, the despair, and sometimes the hope of his creations.

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We realize we are lucky to live in the era we do. We also realize anything can change to tear us apart. Is it fate? Destiny? Or do we bring about these changes on our own?

McFarland will let us know.

"Literate and suspenseful... complex and lyrical... drawn from the traditions of Southern Gothic horror. John McFarland has a talent for drawing horror from raw human emotion. The Dark Walk Forward is a heartbreaking and sad as well as frightening, with characters that linger in the mind long after the pages have turned." ~ Elizabeth Donald, Author of Nocturne, Setting Suns and The Cold Ones

"McFarland tempers his frights with the mercy of familial love and sympathy for outsiders and victims. Horror readers will be riveted." ~ Publishers Weekly