Jackal by Erin E. Adams

Published by Bantam on October 4, 2022

Alice Walker was ten before she realized that her skin color differed from her peers. Alice was killed in 1986, soon after she made that discovery. Her death in the woods was deemed accidental. Alice’s heart had been removed from her chest, an inconvenient fact that authorities attributed to “animal activity.” Keisha Woodson suffered a similar death in the same woods in 2002. Morgan Daniels disappeared in 1994. They aren’t the only black girls who lost their hearts in the woods, but the police in Johnstown fail to notice a pattern.

Liz Rocher’s mother is Haitian. Liz was born in 1985, the year the first black girl disappeared in the woods. Liz had a bad experience of her own in the woods on the day Keisha disappeared. Liz remembers an encounter with a monster in a shadow (or maybe it was a dog), but her mind might have constructed a false memory to protect her from the truth. Melissa Parker helped Liz find her way out of the woods that day.

Liz returns to Johnstown in 2017. She has bad memories of the school where she was labeled an oreo, too white in her manner of speech for the black kids, too black in appearance for the white kids. Her teachers believed black people were “an alien anomaly in white suburban perfection.” Her only friend was Melissa, a white girl who didn’t have the looks or money to fit in with the other white girls. Liz left Johnstown because too many people in town could only look at her “in a way that makes themselves feel superior.”

Liz only returns because Melissa is finally getting married to her boyfriend, Garrett Washington. They have a daughter named Caroline. Melissa’s father was skeptical of his daughter’s decision to have a baby with a black man, but he finally decided to meet his granddaughter after he bonded with Garrett while hunting for deer.

The wedding reception is at the edge of the woods. Liz is supposed to be keeping an eye on Caroline, but Caroline disappears while Liz is getting drinks. Liz looks in the woods when she can’t find Caroline and finds a bloody piece of Caroline’s party dress.

With that setup, the story addresses “missing child” themes that are common to crime novels. The story adds a reasonably creative mix of horror themes (don’t peer into shadows; Liz has bright eyes that signal someone who has been touched by the woods). Racial and historical themes add powerful context to the plot. In 1923, the mayor of Johnstown ordered more than 2,000 African Americans and Mexican immigrants to leave the city. Liz wonders how she could have grown up in the city without learning that fact. It’s the side of American history that white supremacists don’t want schools to teach, but it belongs with the St. Louis race riots and the Tulsa race massacre as a moment in American history that every child should study. Jackal is in part a horror novel, but what happened in those cities is the true horror.

The story offers several suspects who may be involved in the disappearance of Caroline and/or all the other missing black girls, assuming they are missing and the disappearing girls aren’t just an urban lesson. Suspects include Melissa’s father and husband, Keisha’s mother, a cop named Doug who helps Liz develop a map of missing girls, and a guy named Chris who encountered Liz in the woods on the night that Keisha disappeared. Not to mention a shadowy dog monster that might be lurking in the woods. Maybe the killer is supernatural. Maybe the killer belongs to a satanic cult performing one of those annual solstice sacrifices that thriller writers love to imagine.

I won’t spoil the ending, but it’s fair to say that the resolution combines a murder mystery with the supernatural. The explanation for the unsolved (perhaps unnoticed) killings is a stretch. So is the motivation that drives the supernatural entity.

Stories of the supernatural merit the suspension of disbelief only if they are frightening; Jackal fails to meet that test. Liz’s important learning moment at the novel’s end is a bit contrived, although I liked the use of a supernatural entity as an allegory for the racial hatred that divides the nation. I’m recommending the novel for the mild suspense it generates, for Erin E. Adams’ effort to build Liz into a fully realized character, and for the important themes that hold the story together.

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