Introducing The Family That Carried Their House on Their Backs

So it seems that the rumours are true: we have an incredible new author joining the Half Mystic family! Please join us today in welcoming Sammie Downing, author of Half Mystic Press’ debut novella, The Family That Carried Their House on Their Backs—open for preorder now.

In House, Young Miriam is born into a world where women carry houses stitched to their backs, while men carry keys with the power to unlock them. Miriam’s nomadic family moves from clearing to clearing within a dark wood, but no matter how deep into the forest they travel, the haunted calls of Wild Things follow. As precious family heirlooms disappear & Father roams through the woods later & later into the night, Mother slowly loses her memory & Miriam begins to understand that her family might not be as human as it appears. This is a modern fairytale that interrogates the trauma embodied by mothers, inherited by daughters, & patterned in our walls, chests, & feet.

Mark Mayer, author of The Aerialists—an Indie Next Selection & Electric Literature Best Debut—said of the book: “The Family that Carried Their House on Their Backs is a magical story and a family story; its magic evolves from its unfaltering attention to how family—as captivity, as inheritance—can feel. Sammie Downing rediscovers the pure facts of love and and wildness in the spare, strange folklore through which her characters set out. A wise and stunning novella of intense tenderness about the permanence that dwells inside our transience and the wilderness that lives within our homes.”

Joshua Corey, Dorset Prize & Fitzpatrick-O’Dinn Award-winning author of Severance Songs & Fourier Series, commented: “In this beguiling family romance, a daughter asks her father, ‘how do you know what you’re looking at in the mirror?’ Her question haunts a darkly beautiful fairy tale of a migrant family moving from place to place in an endless wood, told with cheekiness and wit, with a surprise hiding in every exchange between child and parent, human and Wild Thing, house and home. Luxurious and raw, attuned to the wounds in nature that are also wounds in us, Sammie Downing’s debut displays an uncanny power, like the family at its center, ‘to wring music from your bones.’”

Meanwhile, Kaisa Cummings, author of Home Remedies, shared of House: “This is one of my favorite pieces ever written. It’s as tender as a bruise. It’s light and murky and beautiful as nighttime mist descending on a forest. It’s whimsical yet slightly acrid. It is courageous and raw and unsentimental. A heartbreaking portrait of sisters and mothers. This story brings me to my knees.”

Emily Capettini, author of Thistle—winner of the Omnidawn Fabulist Fiction Prize—wrote: “Mother restarts her memory. Father balances precariously between two worlds. Meanwhile, sisters Miriam and Essie struggle with their parents’ sometimes devastating imperfections and what it means to grow up, grow apart, and grow together. In these ghostly bites of prose, Sammie Downing gives us glimpses through windowpanes to the unsettling world of Houses and Hollows, Wild Things and severed keys, and sisters mirrored.”

If your interest is piqued, we would love to send House your way on December 18, 2019! Here’s where you can preorder the book. As well, don’t forget to subscribe to the Half Mystic newsletter to be notified when the blog tour for the book begins. We’ll be hosting an interview with & guest post by Sammie alongside many other to-be-announced goodies, & she’ll be headed to other journals & blogs across the internet to talk about the inspiration behind & creation process of the book!

If you’re a blogger, editor, podcaster, or journalist interested in participating in House’s blog tour or otherwise covering the book, do feel free to get in touch with us. We’d love to hear from you & share more information on how you can participate in introducing this stunning creation to the world.

Dear songbirds, in this autumn-soaked time of cold coffee & swinging pendulums, we hope you’ll join us in stepping into a new fairytale, one rimmed with dark edges yet still infinitely tender, still so full of wonder. We can’t wait to share our first novella with you. Welcome to the clearing—to the wildness—to The Family.