If you attended MidSouthCon this year or the MSFA meeting in May, you may have enjoyed the pleasure of meeting Gary Holleman. It amazes me to meet a warm and gentle soul like Gary, then delve into his horrific imagination.

 And delve into his imagination is just what I think happens when you read his work. Ungrateful Dead touched home for me, not just because of the many familiar Memphis locations, but also because of the terrible mother-daughter relationship he explores in the course of the story.

 The word was out in Memphis--if you had a problem with the supernatural, Dr. Luther Shea was your man. After all, he taught a couple of courses in the supernatural at the University of Memphis. He wrote a book on the supernatural and the Commercial Appeal ran a story about him. So when Alana Magnus thought she was being possessed by her dead mother, everybody told her to see Luther. But when she started talking about possession, Luther gently tried to convince her to see his-friend-the-shrink, Dr. Cal Weinberg. Alana "persuades" Luther to listen to her whole story first before dubbing her as simply crazy.

 Alana's story goes far back into childhood, as she describes her mother's eccentric friends and lifestyle. Alana said her mother always knew when she played hooky from one of her expensive boarding schools, and that she would be punished by losing something she valued whenever she goofed off. When Alana was nine, her mother's strangeness seemed to escalate. She acquired a new boyfriend named Anton Gadarn whose slovenly appearance and bad smell were odd enough but he was also a midget. This seemed quite out of character for a woman whose previous male friends were always almost too handsome.

 Alana said she finally felt she had a life of her own when her mother died the previous year. Alana bought a house, got a job she really wanted, started living. Then she noticed three men following her. She noticed changes in herself. She began to be afraid again but determined to keep this life she finally has, she sought help from Luther Shea.

 Luther and Cal share an interest in the ocean and the occult. They met in Florida on a scuba diving trip, discovered they both lived in Memphis, and have been friends ever since.  It makes the two of them ideally suited to help Alana whether she is really being possessed or is  just plain crazy.

 There are lots of details about each of the characters, making them more real and easier to visualize. You find yourself cheering on their discoveries and victories while you anxiously turn the pages faster when the villains seem to be getting ahead. I got to know these people, the good ones and the bad ones. They told their story all around Memphis, at the Mall of Memphis, at some spooky old house off East Parkway, at the University of Memphis, at some big home in Germantown, then back to Memphis within the sound of the train running beside Southern. Gary nailed MLGW in a hilarious paragraph on page 45 (no, I'm not going to quote it: read the book!) There are certainly some gruesome and gory scenes but ultimately, the book works because you come to care about what happens to these folks.

I highly recommend Ungrateful Dead. Do yourself the favor of reading it!

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