Science Fiction & Fantasy
![Ann Fraistat - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_a_ann_fraistat.jpg)
What We Harvest
For fans of Wilder Girls comes a nightmarish debut guaranteed to keep you up through the night, about an idyllic small town poisoned by its past, and one girl who must fight the strange disease that's slowly claiming everyone she loves.
Wren owes everything she has to her hometown, Hollow's End, a centuries-old, picture-perfect slice of America. Tourists travel miles to marvel at its miracle crops, including the shimmering, iridescent wheat of Wren's family's farm. At least, they did. Until five months ago.
That's when the Quicksilver blight first surfaced, poisoning the farms of Hollow's End one by one. It began by consuming the crops, thick silver sludge bleeding from the earth. Next were the animals. Infected livestock and wild creatures staggered off into the woods by day-only to return at night, their eyes fogged white, leering from the trees.
Then the blight came for the neighbors.
Wren is among the last locals standing, and the blight has finally come for her, too. Now the only one she can turn to is her ex, Derek, the last person she wants to call. They haven't spoken in months, but Wren and Derek still have one thing in common: Hollow's End means everything to them. Only, there's much they don't know about their hometown and its celebrated miracle crops. And they're about to discover that miracles aren't free.
Their ancestors have an awful lot to pay for, and Wren and Derek are the only ones left to settle old debts.
Wren owes everything she has to her hometown, Hollow's End, a centuries-old, picture-perfect slice of America. Tourists travel miles to marvel at its miracle crops, including the shimmering, iridescent wheat of Wren's family's farm. At least, they did. Until five months ago.
That's when the Quicksilver blight first surfaced, poisoning the farms of Hollow's End one by one. It began by consuming the crops, thick silver sludge bleeding from the earth. Next were the animals. Infected livestock and wild creatures staggered off into the woods by day-only to return at night, their eyes fogged white, leering from the trees.
Then the blight came for the neighbors.
Wren is among the last locals standing, and the blight has finally come for her, too. Now the only one she can turn to is her ex, Derek, the last person she wants to call. They haven't spoken in months, but Wren and Derek still have one thing in common: Hollow's End means everything to them. Only, there's much they don't know about their hometown and its celebrated miracle crops. And they're about to discover that miracles aren't free.
Their ancestors have an awful lot to pay for, and Wren and Derek are the only ones left to settle old debts.
Editorial Reviews
★ "Intense, gripping, and deeply haunting." -Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Clever, grotesque, and oozing with atmosphere, What We Harvest is a delightful, page-turning debut. Fraistat masterfully blends horror, fantasy, and science into a tale brimming with slow-creeping dread and explosive, long-buried secrets. I devoured it in one sitting." -Allison Saft, author of Down Comes the Night
"Eerie and beautiful, What We Harvest is a novel that will sink into your roots before it devours you whole. Fraistat's prose is both lyrical and haunting, and she crafts a story that breaks your heart and heals it in equal turns. Horrifying but ultimately hopeful, this novel will be horror readers' next obsession." -Courtney Gould, author of The Dead and the Dark
"A vivid and engrossing horror-tinged tale of magic and corrosive family secrets" -Kirkus Reviews
"Fraistat proves a deft hand at both slow-burn suspense and body horror…an engrossing read." -The Bulletin
"Fraistat's debut is richly detailed and pulsing with harrowing suspense…Recommend to fans of Rory Power's Wilder Girls or Claire Legrand's Sawkill Girls. This atmospheric tale of zombies and rotting legacies is riveting." -School Library Journal
"Dazzling and dreadful. What We Harvest grabbed me by the throat and wouldn't let go." -Erin A. Craig, New York Times bestselling author of House of Salt and Sorrows
"Fast-paced and oh-so-creepy, with a festering secret at its center, What We Harvest is the rural zombie novel I never knew I wanted." -Erica Waters, author of Ghost Wood Song and The River Has Teeth
"Wilder Girls' successor is finally here-and it's eerier and more atmospheric than any reader could hope for!" -Laura Graveline, Brazos Bookstore, Houston, TX
"Unputdownable, unforgettable, and gorgeously written. A must-read book." -Ashley Winstead, author of In My Dreams I Hold a Knife
"Clever, grotesque, and oozing with atmosphere, What We Harvest is a delightful, page-turning debut. Fraistat masterfully blends horror, fantasy, and science into a tale brimming with slow-creeping dread and explosive, long-buried secrets. I devoured it in one sitting." -Allison Saft, author of Down Comes the Night
"Eerie and beautiful, What We Harvest is a novel that will sink into your roots before it devours you whole. Fraistat's prose is both lyrical and haunting, and she crafts a story that breaks your heart and heals it in equal turns. Horrifying but ultimately hopeful, this novel will be horror readers' next obsession." -Courtney Gould, author of The Dead and the Dark
"A vivid and engrossing horror-tinged tale of magic and corrosive family secrets" -Kirkus Reviews
"Fraistat proves a deft hand at both slow-burn suspense and body horror…an engrossing read." -The Bulletin
"Fraistat's debut is richly detailed and pulsing with harrowing suspense…Recommend to fans of Rory Power's Wilder Girls or Claire Legrand's Sawkill Girls. This atmospheric tale of zombies and rotting legacies is riveting." -School Library Journal
"Dazzling and dreadful. What We Harvest grabbed me by the throat and wouldn't let go." -Erin A. Craig, New York Times bestselling author of House of Salt and Sorrows
"Fast-paced and oh-so-creepy, with a festering secret at its center, What We Harvest is the rural zombie novel I never knew I wanted." -Erica Waters, author of Ghost Wood Song and The River Has Teeth
"Wilder Girls' successor is finally here-and it's eerier and more atmospheric than any reader could hope for!" -Laura Graveline, Brazos Bookstore, Houston, TX
"Unputdownable, unforgettable, and gorgeously written. A must-read book." -Ashley Winstead, author of In My Dreams I Hold a Knife
Readers Top Reviews
Anonymous🎀Scotti
What We Harvest is one of B&N's 2022 Book Awards Young Adult Shortlist titles. When I read the summary, I had to read it. A YA supernatural horror/thriller, twisted small-town secrets, blighted zombies? Count me in! This book has such a unique take on the "Founding Families" trope. By page 15, I couldn't stop reading. I loved this debut and cannot wait to read what Fraistat cooks up next.
MjBAnonymous🎀Sco
This book flows easily. The plot is compelling and vividly crafted. I could feel, taste, smell, and see the lure of the sticky, slimy, repulsively beautiful quicksilver Blight--the Blight which is inescapably advancing as it infects plants and zombifies animals and people along its way. In addition to her masterful descriptions and tense plotting, the author also deftly develops themes of guilt, exploitation, secrecy, denial, and hypocrisy throughout the book. To counter the evil that is emerging, teenage Wren, with the help of her former love Derek, her ever loyal female dog Teddy, as well as a reliable female horse named Buckwheat, must confront the Blight and the sins of the adults in the once idyllic farmlands of the town of Hollow's End. Wren is self sacrificing in her atonement for the past. But this horror story is not without abundant hope and magic... I urge you to read it!
ARussellMjBAnonym
I actually read the entire book in two days. I didn’t do much else. This book should definitely be optioned for film. It is remarkably good, extremely confident, with great turns of phrase throughout, and a genuine unsettling atmosphere that the author, Ann Fraistat, maintains with an expert hand. The various chase scenes are visceral and adrenaline-laced. And it still manages to hit the mark from a YA perspective, dealing with the issues of self-doubt, first love, and a need to find a place in the world that most young people struggle with. From that perspective alone, it is as near to perfect as makes no difference. It is a Nancy Drew book written by Stephen King. About the best thing I can say by way of praise is I had no idea where it was heading, which in itself made it, as the jacket says, “unputdownable.”
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter 1
So, it had finally come to kill us, too.
The sickest part was, I'd started to believe we were invincible-that somehow the miracle of our farm might protect us. I'd seen Rainbow Fields survive crackling lightning, hail, devouring armyworms, eyespot fungus. No matter what came from sky or earth, the field behind our house still swayed with towering, iridescent wheat. Crimson, orange, yellow, all the way to my favorite, twilight-blazed violet: each section winked with its own sheen.
My whole life, the wheat had soothed me to sleep through my bedroom window with its rustling whispers, sweeter than any lullaby, or at least any my mom knew.
My whole life, until now. When I realized even rainbows could rot.
I stood at the very back of our field. A gust of wind caught my hair, and the cascading waves of wheat flickered into a rainbow, then stilled back into a field of shivering white gold. At my feet, a sickly ooze crept from their roots. It wound up their shafts and dripped from their tips.
The quicksilver blight, we called it, because it gleamed like molten metal. But the stench gave it away for what it really was-a greedy, hungry rot.
So far, I'd only spotted six plants that had fallen victim. No surprise they were at the back of the field, closest to the forest.
The blight in those woods had crept toward us for months, devouring our neighbors' crops and pets and livestock. Our neighbors themselves. Every night, the grim white eyes rose like restless stars, watching us from behind the silver-slicked trees.
The air hung around me, damp-cold for late June in Hollow's End. Spring never came this year, let alone summer. Even now, the forest loomed twisted and bare. From where I stood with our wheat, I could see streaks of blight glinting behind decaying patches of bark.
My breaths came in tiny sips. If I closed my eyes, if I stopped breathing, could I pretend even for a second that none of this was real?
The field was hauntingly quiet. Wheat brushing against wheat. The farmhands had packed up and fled weeks ago- like most of the shop owners, like most everyone in Hollow's End except the core founding families-before the quarantine sealed us off from the rest of the world. In the distance, our farmhouse stood dark. Even Mom and Dad were out, off helping the Harrises fight the blight on their farm. They had no idea our own wheat was bleeding into the dirt.
Dad had tried to keep me plenty busy while they were away, tasking me with clearing out brambles near the shed. He and Mom didn't want me anywhere near the back of our field, so close to the infected forest. But today, they weren't here to check for crop contamination themselves-and they also weren't here to stop me.
I was our last line of defense. The least I could do was act like it.
Hands gloved for protection, I grabbed the nearest stalk and heaved it up from the festering soil. I could barely stand to hoist it in the air, its suffocating roots gasping for earth. But this plant was already good as dead. Worse. It would kill everything around it, too.
Even me, if I wasn't wearing gloves.
As I ripped up plant after plant, the stench, syrupy like rotting fruit, crawled down my throat. I hurled the stems into the forest and spat after them.
The wind answered, carrying a distant tickling laugh that squirmed into my ear.
I froze, peering into the mouth of the forest-for anything that might lurch out, to grab me or bite me or worse.
Only silent trees stared back. I must've imagined it.
The blighted didn't wake until nightfall, anyway, and the sun was still high in the sky. Maybe two o'clock. I had time to deal with our infected wheat, before my parents raced back from the Harrises' in time to meet the town curfew at sundown. Before the blighted came out.
Not a lot of time. But some.
Mildew stirred in my sinuses, like it was actually under the skin of my face. A part of me.
A sour taste curdled behind my teeth.
I spat again and turned to kick the dislodged earth away from our healthy wheat. My foot slipped-on a patch of glistening blight. The puddle splashed into tiny beads, like mercury spilled from a broken old-fashioned thermometer. Shifting, oily silver dots.
My stomach dropped. No. Oh no, oh no.
It wasn't just in the plants. It was in the soil. How deep did it already run?
I needed a shovel.
I threw off my contaminated gloves, kicked off my contaminated shoes, and ran. Dirt dampened my socks with every pounding step down the path to our shed. Seven generations of blood, sweat, and toil had dripped from my family into this soil. That was the price we paid to tame this patch of land-our farm. Our home.
That wheat was everything we had.
As long as I could remember, my parents had sniped at each othe...
So, it had finally come to kill us, too.
The sickest part was, I'd started to believe we were invincible-that somehow the miracle of our farm might protect us. I'd seen Rainbow Fields survive crackling lightning, hail, devouring armyworms, eyespot fungus. No matter what came from sky or earth, the field behind our house still swayed with towering, iridescent wheat. Crimson, orange, yellow, all the way to my favorite, twilight-blazed violet: each section winked with its own sheen.
My whole life, the wheat had soothed me to sleep through my bedroom window with its rustling whispers, sweeter than any lullaby, or at least any my mom knew.
My whole life, until now. When I realized even rainbows could rot.
I stood at the very back of our field. A gust of wind caught my hair, and the cascading waves of wheat flickered into a rainbow, then stilled back into a field of shivering white gold. At my feet, a sickly ooze crept from their roots. It wound up their shafts and dripped from their tips.
The quicksilver blight, we called it, because it gleamed like molten metal. But the stench gave it away for what it really was-a greedy, hungry rot.
So far, I'd only spotted six plants that had fallen victim. No surprise they were at the back of the field, closest to the forest.
The blight in those woods had crept toward us for months, devouring our neighbors' crops and pets and livestock. Our neighbors themselves. Every night, the grim white eyes rose like restless stars, watching us from behind the silver-slicked trees.
The air hung around me, damp-cold for late June in Hollow's End. Spring never came this year, let alone summer. Even now, the forest loomed twisted and bare. From where I stood with our wheat, I could see streaks of blight glinting behind decaying patches of bark.
My breaths came in tiny sips. If I closed my eyes, if I stopped breathing, could I pretend even for a second that none of this was real?
The field was hauntingly quiet. Wheat brushing against wheat. The farmhands had packed up and fled weeks ago- like most of the shop owners, like most everyone in Hollow's End except the core founding families-before the quarantine sealed us off from the rest of the world. In the distance, our farmhouse stood dark. Even Mom and Dad were out, off helping the Harrises fight the blight on their farm. They had no idea our own wheat was bleeding into the dirt.
Dad had tried to keep me plenty busy while they were away, tasking me with clearing out brambles near the shed. He and Mom didn't want me anywhere near the back of our field, so close to the infected forest. But today, they weren't here to check for crop contamination themselves-and they also weren't here to stop me.
I was our last line of defense. The least I could do was act like it.
Hands gloved for protection, I grabbed the nearest stalk and heaved it up from the festering soil. I could barely stand to hoist it in the air, its suffocating roots gasping for earth. But this plant was already good as dead. Worse. It would kill everything around it, too.
Even me, if I wasn't wearing gloves.
As I ripped up plant after plant, the stench, syrupy like rotting fruit, crawled down my throat. I hurled the stems into the forest and spat after them.
The wind answered, carrying a distant tickling laugh that squirmed into my ear.
I froze, peering into the mouth of the forest-for anything that might lurch out, to grab me or bite me or worse.
Only silent trees stared back. I must've imagined it.
The blighted didn't wake until nightfall, anyway, and the sun was still high in the sky. Maybe two o'clock. I had time to deal with our infected wheat, before my parents raced back from the Harrises' in time to meet the town curfew at sundown. Before the blighted came out.
Not a lot of time. But some.
Mildew stirred in my sinuses, like it was actually under the skin of my face. A part of me.
A sour taste curdled behind my teeth.
I spat again and turned to kick the dislodged earth away from our healthy wheat. My foot slipped-on a patch of glistening blight. The puddle splashed into tiny beads, like mercury spilled from a broken old-fashioned thermometer. Shifting, oily silver dots.
My stomach dropped. No. Oh no, oh no.
It wasn't just in the plants. It was in the soil. How deep did it already run?
I needed a shovel.
I threw off my contaminated gloves, kicked off my contaminated shoes, and ran. Dirt dampened my socks with every pounding step down the path to our shed. Seven generations of blood, sweat, and toil had dripped from my family into this soil. That was the price we paid to tame this patch of land-our farm. Our home.
That wheat was everything we had.
As long as I could remember, my parents had sniped at each othe...
