Come to the body. Janice Witherspoon’s stagnant life is upended by a senseless death thousands of miles away. Fueled by shock, steered by fate and fear, she gathers her belongings from her North Carolina apartment and takes to the road, intending to meet the soldier’s body on its journey home. But something &mdash an inner voice, or the beguiling utterances of an older, darker soul? &mdash drives Janice farther off course. When she finally comes to a stop, Janice finds herself deep in rural Pennsylvania, on the grounds of an abandoned lockhouse. Janice is seduced by the calm of the old house, the dry canal, and the mountains rising up all around. Days turn to weeks, to months. Then she lets down her guard, opening her doors to the inhabitants of her new province: Stephen Gainy, a reclusive art teacher and stone carver, and a spectral, alluring woman with a beautiful voice. As Janice grows closer to both Stephen and the elusive minstrel, her calm gives way to a flood of terrifying accidents and nightmares. The indefensible edges between the real and the unreal blur and break down, and Janice is pulled into the web of her own incriminating genealogy, finding herself roped by blood to a series of unspeakable tragedies that occurred generations ago. Whether or not the truths Janice discovers will drown or resuscitate her depends on the choices she makes. Steven Sherrill follows up his acclaimed novels The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break and Visits from the Drowned Girl with an evocative, mesmerizing tale that delicately navigates the line between suspense and horror. Based loosely on actual events from the turn of the twentieth century, The Locktender’s House is an eerie, gripping narrative that reveals how the dark sins of the past are often inescapable.