Friday at the Branches: The Night Strangers

The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian 2011

Bestselling author Chris Bohjalian takes a different genre, the ghost story, and weaves a well-written novel with many intricate plot twists. Pilot Chip Linton, his wife, and twin daughters move to a small White Mountain village in New Hampshire to get away from the memories of his passenger plane crashing into L. Champlain where, unlike the “Miracle on the Hudson”, 39 on board died. Suffering from PTSD, Chip is very much diminished from the high-flyer he used to be. Their new Victorian home was once the site of a young boy’s suicide and has 39 locks on a basement door. It has secret passages, hidden weapons and a secret crypt. Then Chip begins to receive visits from dead passengers. If that plot wasn’t enough to send chills down your spin then a secondary plot, filled with neighbours who are New Age herbalists and occultists with designs on possessing the Linton twins, weaves its way through this spooky story. Those who like Audrey Niffinegger’s ghost story Her Fearful Symmetry and Stephen Irwin’s The Dead Path will enjoy Bohjalian’s new novel The Night Strangers.