TOWN TRAUMA : ERIC LAROCCA'S BURNT SPARROW VOLUME 1: WE ARE ALWAYS TENDER WITH OUR DEAD

We Are Always Tender with Our Dead, the first book in what will be The Burnt Sparrow trilogy, became my first encounter with horror writer Eric LaRocca. I found him to be an author who challenges the reader; not because of the gruesome and graphic violence (Larocca provides a forward to both explain and warn of the content), but because of the way he deals with thematics. He aims to have you feel them rather than interpret them. While he uses the idea of trauma, a trope so often used now, it gets pushback from many of the genre's critics, he examines it as both a communal and personal experience and how those two forms relate to one another.

The small New Hampshire town of Burnt Sparrow has been plagued with tragedies, but none like a mass killing of its citizens by faceless perpetrators. The town elders decide to preserve the bodies as a memoriam, making the caretakers out of young Rupert Cromwell and his father. The two have grown apart due to he death of Rupert's mother and his sexuality. The split becomes even more dramatic due to his father's treatment of the bodies.

Gladys Esherwood, an elders wife, becomes the other major character. Trapped in an ugly marriage, she becomes forced to be an abettor in her husband's crimes. When Rupert enters her life, they could either save each other or drag themselves further down into the darkness.

LaRocca weaves his story from different perspectives and styles. We get the idea of Burnt Sparrow's Dark history through dialogue in the prose and different articles, We get an idea how it affects the town as a collective and how that collective effects individuals like Rupert and Gladys. He employs the discovery of a journal that gives us an understanding of one of the most heinous characters, that enlightens but keeps us off balance. The writer is wonderful keeping us guessing. He also keeps us at a distance that no less conjures emotions in us like a Stanley Kubrick film .

The book has an indirect take on horror. Other than certain people being described as faceless there are few physical representations of the supernatural. However, the acts characters commit are so depraved it takes them from human to inhuman. He gives these people enough human characterization and point of view that creates a humanist element. It makes their violent actions even more horrifying.

As I'm writing this piece it is September 11th of 2025 and the news is dealing with the anniversary of a terrorist attack that shook us all and is making a martyr of a murdered right wing organizer who said some very questionable things. Larocca's book became much clearer today. Hopefully, I'll have the guts for volumes 2 and 3.