The Remaking by Clay McLeod Chapman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Ella Louise has lived in the woods surrounding Pilot’s Creek, Virginia, for nearly a decade. Publicly, she and her daughter Jessica are shunned by their upper-crust family and the Pilot’s Creek residents. Privately, desperate townspeople visit her apothecary for a cure to what ails them—until Ella Louise is blamed for the death of a prominent customer. Accused of witchcraft, both mother and daughter are burned at the stake in the middle of the night. Ella Louise’s burial site is never found, but the little girl has the most famous grave in the South: a steel-reinforced coffin surrounded by a fence of interconnected white crosses.

Their story will take the shape of an urban legend as it’s told around a campfire by a man forever marked by his boyhood encounters with Jessica. Decades later, a boy at that campfire will cast Amber Pendleton as Jessica in a ’70s horror movie inspired by the Witch Girl of Pilot’s Creek. Amber’s experiences on that set and its meta-remake in the ’90s will ripple through pop culture, ruining her life and career after she becomes the target of a witch hunt. Amber’s best chance to break the cycle of horror comes when a true-crime investigator tracks her down to interview her for his popular podcast. But will this final act of storytelling redeem her—or will it bring the story full circle, ready to be told once again? And again. And again

The Remaking is told in 4 chapters, a chronological story that follows an urban legend about a woman, Ella Louise, and her daughter, Jessica, in the small town of Pilots Creek, Virginia. It starts with a man at a campfire, who requires a bottle of booze as his payment for a story about the tale of the two witches. He tells his tale in a reminiscent way - talking about the mother and daughter and how they were not only sought out for their cures but also outcast from society and eventually, burned as witches when a cure goes wrong and takes a life. And thus, an urban legend is born. Next, there is a horror film in which a young Amber Pendleton plays Jessica, only to experience a life time of trouble during and after the film; years later, a horror film remake, in which Amber plays the mother, Ella Louise and ultimately, a pod cast in which the host tries to debunk the ever-growing legend of the two witches, with Amber but is it really? - giving her experiences throughout it all.

A good book that I enjoyed and a worthy read.


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