The Remaking

By: Clay McLeod Chapman

Narrated by: Corey Allen, Morgan Hallett, Suzy Jackson, Clay McLeod Chapman

Inspired by a true story, this supernatural thriller for fans of horror and true crime follows a tale as it evolves every 20 years - with terrifying results.

Ella Louise has lived in the woods surrounding Pilot's Creek, Virginia, for nearly a decade. Publicly, she and her daughter Jessica are shunned by their upper-crust family and the Pilot's Creek residents. Privately, desperate townspeople visit her apothecary for a cure to what ails them - until Ella Louise is blamed for the death of a prominent customer. Accused of witchcraft, both mother and daughter are burned at the stake in the middle of the night. Ella Louise's burial site is never found, but the little girl has the most famous grave in the South: a steel-reinforced coffin surrounded by a fence of interconnected white crosses.

Their story will take the shape of an urban legend as it's told around a campfire by a man forever marked by his boyhood encounters with Jessica. Decades later, a boy at that campfire will cast Amber Pendleton as Jessica in a '70s horror movie inspired by the Witch Girl of Pilot's Creek. Amber's experiences on that set and its meta-remake in the '90s will ripple through pop culture, ruining her life and career after she becomes the target of a witch hunt.

Amber's best chance to break the cycle of horror comes when a true-crime investigator tracks her down to interview her for his popular podcast. But will this final act of storytelling redeem her - or will it bring the story full circle, ready to be told once again? And again. And again....

©2019 Clay McLeod Chapman (P)2019 Recorded Books

Based on a True Story

I don't know why Audible doesn't make clearer that this is a retelling of a real urban legend. The ghost story in The Remaking is actually the Witch Child of Pilot's Knob, with only the details just barely changed. The real little girl and her mother are named Mary Evelyn Ford and Mary Louise Ford, respectively, and the grave actually exists as the author described, in Kentucky.

Knowing the source material for this story about stories adds an additional layer to the author's exploration of why some stories capture our imagination and need to be retold. It also adds to the meta-ness of a book that calls into question what happens when girls' and women's stories are told by men, as the author himself is a man retelling the story of the Fords' deaths.

Based on the blurb, I was worried that this book would be too convoluted to follow, but it's not. Structurally, the book is organized like a sonata; each iteration of the original story is like the recapitulation, calling back to the beginning, yet moving the piece forward. I know a lot of the reviewers complained about the amount of repetition in the book, but the the repetition is the point. The Remaking is not just about the way stories evolve with each obsessive, cyclical retelling, but also how that same repetition plagues victims of historical and generational trauma.

Lots of cultural references

There is a lot of tongue in cheek references, like the story is giving a wink to the reader. Overall a solid story.

This was great!!!…. Until it wasn’t :/

The book starts off with a bang! Great writing and top notch story telling. It even transitions pretty well to the first movie and the “curse”. But then…. Yeah. Much like the scary lore with girl herself… somethings are just better left alone.

The third act dragged on and fell flat. And the fourth??? Ooof. Went way off the rails and the only worse than the point Twist, was the sanctimonious and insanity boring journalist that served as the long overdue nail in the coffin to this gothic bore.

Dissapointing Ending

This story started out With great potential I feel as it went on more was coming At the end was a bit disappointing.

It's disappointing

This could and should have been a really good story. However, it was boring and repetitive. I didn't like the ending and some of it didn't make sense to me. There's so much more that could have been done with this concept. No likable characters either.