Mother Dough

The bread is wonderful. That's how it starts.

Ward Pelletier arrives at his late aunt's farmhouse with his teenage daughter, a long list of repairs, and very little left to spare. In the kitchen sits a stoneware crock of sourdough starter that has been fed for more than a century.

Keeping it alive seems like the easiest thing anyone has asked of him.

Then he starts baking.

The bread is extraordinary. Ward sleeps better. His daughter, Nora, begins to feel at home. The old kitchen offers a warmth neither of them realized how badly they needed.

But his aunt kept records.

Hidden in the flour bin is a book filled with recipes, names, and observations that have nothing to do with baking. The longer Ward reads, the harder it becomes to dismiss what happens around the crock. The dog's devotion. Nora's growing attachment. His own reluctance to leave.

Something in this house depends on being fed. And Ward is beginning to suspect that flour and water are only part of what it takes.

Stopping should be simple.

By the time he tries, his daughter loves it.

An unsettling folk-horror novel about family, hunger, and the things we keep alive because we need them, Mother Dough brings creeping dread into the warmest room in the house.