Book Review: The Feud

The Feud. Frank Heiberger. CreateSpace, November 11, 2014, Kindle and Trade Paperback, 362 pages.

Reviewed by R. H. King, Jr.

India Hills, a struggling female author, is reduced to writing vanity press family histories to make ends meet. She averts financial ruin, at least in the short run, when she is commissioned to write the history of the Duvall-Richards family, the most prominent clan in a small Missouri town. Upon arriving in the town, however, India’s research for the book plunges her into confrontations with ghosts and hellhounds, and thrusts her into the middle of a century-old feud between the Duvall-Richards family and a coven of witches (wiccans). India struggles for her life against the supernatural forces aligned against her, while trying to solve the mystery of who is responsible for the serial beheadings of some of the current day wiccans.  

I think that Mr. Heiberger’s decision to tell this story in a first person feminine voice was an interesting and brave one. Making the protagonist a woman allowed the author to explore the relationship with the wiccans in a very different way than would have been possible with a male protagonist. As a male writer myself, I often wonder if I can really create a realistic female narrator, but I think Mr. Heiberger pulled it off and I found the feminine voice authentic and believable. I would be interested in hearing how women readers react. 

Although the novel gets off to a sleepy start, the middle part of the book was most enjoyable. Mr. Heiberger does an excellent job painting word pictures of his characters, the Missouri town, and its environs. There are several passages and sentences that are stunning, but it was the wiccans, whose characters are rich and interesting, that really helped propel the story for me. Mr. Heiberger also does a good job of introducing elements of a traditional “who-done-it” mystery into the supernatural mix and has the reader guessing throughout about who is friend and who is foe. So there is much to like about this book. 

There are things that could be improved as well. As noted above, the book starts slowly, and I had trouble plowing through the first few chapters. The book also suffers from lack of attention to detail. This manifests itself in typos, dropped words, and wrong word choices, as well as lack of consistency. For example, at one point we are told the hellhounds come from Welsh folklore and a few pages later that they are part of Irish legend. The book is also overly long and the ending somewhat abrupt and unsatisfying.

Mr. Heiberger’s strength as a storyteller does shine through. Overall, I enjoyed the book and think that readers who gravitate toward the supernatural/occult/fantasy genres will in particular find this book worth reading.