Sparrow Hill Road: Ghosts, cars, and undead highways

The topic for today is Sparrow Hill Road, by Seanan McGuire.  Apparently it fits in her InCryptid 'verse, but it is essentially a stand alone. 

I usually steer clear of books that look to me like they might creep into the horror genre.  I'm getting a bit better at picking out which ones are actually edging on being actual horror and which ones just have slightly creepy covers (or the person assigning genre doesn't know where else to put it), but I'm still a little wary of most things involving large numbers of ghost characters, or where the MC is a ghost.

The gamble payed off in this case.  I picked this one up, if I'm being honest, because I was looking for anything by Seanan McGuire that wasn't the third book in a series and was on the shelves at my local library the day I was in.  I figured this one looked kind of interesting, and it was a singleton, so good on most all fronts (I was a little wary of the ghost part, but obviously not enough to not pick it up).  As it turned out, I quite enjoyed it, and managed to get through it in one sitting.

                     Here be Spoilers!  Ye be warned!!                      

The book is about the ghost of Rose Marshall, who (in this book) is the ghostly origin of the Phantom Prom Date and the Girl in the Diner ghost stories.  She's a hitchhiker ghost, and her jobs run the gamut from helping souls navigate the confusion of right-after-death to saving others from being consumed by the immortal who killed her.  Because she, as it turns out, is the One Who Got Away.  Rose was killed by Bobby Cross because, as it turns out out, her soul would have been rather strong fuel for his car, and as long as his car is fueled, he doesn't die (basically).  But she was picked up (not knowing she was dead) by someone else before he could get to her, hence why she is a hitchhiking ghost.  He's still after her, and she's been working at helping other people, both living and dead, while avoiding Bobby Cross, all since she died in 1952.  There's a couple of almost-really-terrible-outcomes (some with Cross, some not), and a final confrontation at the end of the book.  Also a highschool sweetheart who spent his life pining for Rose.  And man is that storyline resolution interesting.

Some of the things I found particularly enjoyable were the concept of ghost highways.  Literal highways for people ghosts and car ghosts (yes, those are a thing).  There's also routewitches, (essentially what they sound like) and crossroads ghosts (think Hecate.  Sort of), and the various ghosts and 'magic' that fit with all those things.  A couple of the chapters go into some explanation about all of the above and they're some of my favourites.  

As may be somewhat evident, the setting and the story are based heavily in the American road culture.  In fact there's really no other way a story like this could work, car culture of this sort being a very North American, and particularly American, thing.  The ghost stories and cultural references that lace the book are solidly from that, with a heavy dose of Americana thrown in as an enhancer.  It might take some getting used to (or googling) if it's unfamiliar, but it works well.  

The story is a little bit jumpy at times, partly because it hops through time back and forth almost every chapter, jumping from an incident in Rose's past to one in her present (most of the time the events are connected in some way but it can occasionally be a bit hard to figure that out), and partly because, as I recently discovered, the chapters were originally all short stories posted online that McGuire went over, re-did a bit, and put back together (Apparently there's one that didn't make it in at all because it just didn't fit in with the flow well enough).

Overall it was a good book, if a little choppy in places.  Good if you like ghost stories with hints of Urban Fantasy, and references to American culture and music.  Which apparently I do.  Probably a 3.5 out of 5.

        It’s a very sad story, it’s a very sad tale,
 All about what can happen when your brake lines fail.
 It’s the tale of Rose Marshall -- the sweetest sixteen --
 And why you shouldn’t race at Sidewinder Ravine...

        Now she’s a pretty little dead girl in a coup de ville,
 And she’s looking for a drag race up on Dead Man’s Hill