[BOOKS OF THE DEAD] Salvage: A Ghost Story - Duncan Ralston

Salvage: A Ghost Story - Books of the Dead Review

Welcome to Books of the Dead. A monthly series by published author and founder of The Readers in the Rue Morgue Book Club Victoria Brown where she deep dives into some her favourite (and not so favourite) authors and books.

Author: Duncan Ralston

Publication Date:  31 May 2016

Synopsis: Thirty years ago, the town of Peace Falls was flooded to build a hydroelectric dam. To this day, its ruins remain below the surface of Chapel Lake—including the church, miraculously undamaged after all these years, its steeple visible above the water. When his younger sister's body is found washed up on the shore, Owen Saddler follows in her footsteps to the cabin she'd rented on Chapel Lake, diving among the ruins below the surface. Soon he's caught up in a decades-old mystery of the religious mania that divided the town in the late-'70s, and the sudden disappearance of Reverend Crouch and several of his parishioners—a mystery the citizens of Chapel Lake had hoped would stay submerged beneath the water, in the ghost town below.

Thoughts:

Having read two of Duncan Ralston’s novels and absolutely loving them – ‘Helloween’ and ‘Pedo Island Bloodbath’ (yes, you read that right) – I went into ‘Salvage: A Ghost Story’ expecting to love it just as much. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. 

‘Salvage: A Ghost Story’ has several horror elements that I love: ghosts (obviously), characters with traumatic pasts, a small town, and a mystery the outsider has set out to solve. Sadly, for me, it fell flat. The protagonist Owen felt very inconsistent. Some of his actions felt unrealistic (including a 2-day lifechanging romance with a friend from his past who he doesn’t remember at first), and his mental health struggles felt unexplored. They were addressed and explained (too simplistically, I thought), but never in much depth. Perhaps it is because Ralston began this book during a period of his own mental health struggles and he did not want to delve too deeply, but that’s pure speculation. His sister Lori felt like a caricature of the rebellious, hippie sibling who parents just don’t understand, so her death and the mystery behind it quickly became uninteresting to me. There was also a manic-pixie-dream-neighbour who makes two short appearances purely to drive the plot. Ralston could have plucked her out of the story completely and it wouldn’t have made much of a difference (she does save Owen’s life, but even that felt a bit too convenient). 

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The mystery itself was intriguing (spoilers ahead). Owen can’t remember his early childhood and it is slowly revealed that a fanatical religious leader was his father who tried to sacrifice him (due to some fairly vague cultish reason), and that Owen has repressed these memories to protect himself. The old town where Owen spent his childhood was washed underwater when a hydroelectric dam was installed and Owen discovers through his sleuthing (which isn’t really his sleuthing, he learns pretty much everything from his sister’s journal, which added little to his agency) that the ‘religious cult’ died in the church when the town was flooded. The town above water accepts that the religious leader must have convinced his followers to sacrifice themselves, but Owen discovers that several townspeople actually trapped the cult in the basement of the church to kill the religious leader. The ghost of said leader begins to kill everyone who participated in his final demise. Classic ghost revenge story. 

The execution, however, fell flat. The religious leader, whose name I can’t even remember because he made such a minor impression on me, did not feel charismatic and the fever the cult followed him with did not feel earned. And the reveal that the religious leader was schizophrenic – his schizophrenic side was responsible for his charismatic sermons, that we never really see – felt forced. The deaths of those involved also quickly because very fantastical, to the point where it felt silly and did not match the tone of the story.

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One element I did enjoy (I don’t wish to be too negative here) is that a lot of the story took place underwater, which was described well, inspiring feelings of dread and suffocation. Ralston did that exceedingly well. 

This could have been a rich story, steeped in thorough and sensitive explorations of grief, trauma, and childhood abuse, but it was too surface level to leave any lasting impression on me as a reader. Perhaps it is because this was Ralston’s first book and he hadn’t found his feet yet. I’m glad I read two of his other novels first because I don’t think I would have picked up another Ralston book if this had been my introduction to his writing. 

Verdict: ⭐️⭐️

-Victoria Brown

-Victoria Brown, Author of The Death Ship: Recovering The Bodies of Titanic's Dead

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