Melissa Faliveno’s debut novel Hemlock — touted by the publisher as a “butch Black Swan,” a description I find misleading, thinking “butch The Shining” more befitting, but also I won’t dwell on it since marking copy is a separate entity entirely from the art and craft of literature — follows protagonist Sam back to the Wisconsin woods she grew up surrounded by, the same woods that swallowed up her missing mother years before. She has come back to fix up the cabin her father built so that they might sell it and move on with their lives. But with Sam’s journey into the past and into the place that shapes her comes a haunting. That haunting seemingly has multiple sources, multiple meanings, and Faliveno lets them wash over you rather than beating you over the head with them. The result is a multivalent, deeply queer, equally visceral and cerebral novel.

Through tightly executed pacing, Faliveno lulls you into the haunting of Hemlock just as Sam is lulled. I realized slightly over the halfway mark of the novel that reading it felt not unlike succumbing to cabin fever; as Sam’s isolation and disconnect from reality deepened, I too burrowed into the book, abandoning most other thoughts. The horror ratchets up in gradual and then steeper inclines. But the second half, I felt fluttery, afraid. It probably didn’t help that I read much of the back half in a cabin in rural North Carolina. But I recommend the “immersive” Hemlock experience: Bring this book to your next queer camping trip.

Earning its title, Hemlock is a beautiful poison, lush and wondrous in its descriptions of the natural world. Though I’ve never been to this particular Northwoods region of Wisconsin, I have a deep love for the type of Midwestern small town Faliveno renders so gorgeously and complexly on the page. I have loved many women from these kinds of places, and they have brought me closer to nature and especially to the beauty and magic and danger of feral wild creatures.

Sam might just be becoming one of those beautiful, dangerous creatures in Hemlock. Or she is being hunted by one. Or the novel’s monster story is something else entirely, some combination of these things, Sam both hunted and the hunter.

Hemlock dwells in my favorite cranny of slightly speculative literary fiction: the space between uncertainty and understanding where things can happen that are both inexplicable and strange as well as wholly believable and grounded. The novel’s portrayal of addiction — one of the best I’ve read in a while and indeed up there in the ranks of greatest literature steeped in addiction alongside The Shining — embodies this well. Six-packs of beers Sam swears she didn’t buy show up as if by magic. Whiskey refills are conjured similarly and inevitably. Sam sometimes finds herself in the wilderness, naked and alone, with no recollection of how she got there. But these strange occurrences are not so strange when considered in the context of alcoholism and the compounding effects of grief and isolation. The wilderness in Hemlock is a beautiful, terrifying place. To Sam, it is both home and horror. (I’d be remiss not to acknowledge fans of Yellowjackets will certainly find a lot to love about this novel; while the story is quite different, thematic threads do overlap.)

Sam’s alcoholism simultaneously becomes a source of horror and a lens through which she experiences the horrors. Alcoholism becomes a haunting, an intergenerational curse. A less complex text would make this feel moralizing or flat, but Hemlock does not demonize any of its characters nor define them solely by their urges. Even in its most difficult-to-read passages — a particular flashback between Sam and her mother comes to mind — it never loses sight of its characters’ humanity. It is a monster narrative but queered, diverging from the typical arc of a monster book. Monstrous things can exist in any of us; it does not make us evil.

Everything that could seem “supernatural” in Hemlock has an explanation if you really think about it and if you don’t succumb to the detached denial that plagues Sam. And yes, this even goes for the novel’s talking deer. A doe frequently visits Sam at the cabin and speaks to her, displaying impossibly human-like qualities. It speaks to the strength of Faliveno’s craft that this somehow never comes off silly. There’s humor, sure, but the doe sections are impressively smooth and convincing and don’t distract, instead fdeeling like an integral and natural part of the novel’s world. There’s care and intention behind this weaving in of mythology, and it pays off.

Alcoholism, intergenerational trauma, grief, self-destruction, hunger — there are many hauntings in the pages of Hemlock. The concept of home haunts in its own complicated way. Even the seduction of desire feels a bit like a haunting here — hauntings can sometimes feel good, you know —  Sam pulled toward a local girl who also pushes her toward danger. Yes, Hemlock has many hauntings, and as a result, it will haunt you.

Hemlock by Melissa Faliveno is out now.