Growing up in the Appalachian sliver of Virginia, I was surrounded by magic.
My great grandmother, with her fourth grade education, had an astonishing memory. My little brother could see spirits. My mother had the lithe 90’s beauty and preternatural capability of the modern witches my brother and I worshiped in movies like Practical Magic. And, of course, I grew up hearing the story of my grandmother who had once practiced Appalachian folk magic before she swore off “the work”, which inspired my debut novel Strange Folk.
The magic in my family felt partly like a birthright, like something absorbed from generations of stubborn joy and hardship. It also seemed to come from the land itself–there is something about growing up in nature, cut off from the rest of the world, that encourages a strangeness to take root and bloom in a person. It can be a thorny, psychedelic flower–what sets us apart from others also sets us apart–but it can also be a source of pride, and Strange Folk is, if anything, a celebration of this magic.
The novel follows Lee and her two children as they return to her estranged magical family in Appalachia. After years of rootlessness and alienation, they each discover new powers and old mysteries–ones that must be solved before the force of history pulls them under.
I have compiled a list of books about people from rural places, both real and imagined, who also possess supernatural abilities. These characters’ journeys demonstrate how suffering and scarcity can produce extraordinary talents, as well as the power of nature and the memories held by the land and its spirits.
Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin
On the fictional island of Gont, a young boy discovers he possesses an exceptional power when he saves his village from marauders by summoning a great fog. He begins his magical training with a wise mage through slow, deep communion with the earth, but quickly becomes a victim of his own hubris and makes a grave mistake that will haunt him for the rest of his life. As he attends a magical school, takes his first job taming a dragon with a secret name, and battles a shadow that stalks him from land to land, his greatest lesson becomes not how to wield his immense power, but how to confront his own frailty.
The allure of this literary masterpiece extends far beyond its prescribed age group with its brilliantly precise prose, complex characters, and universal themes. A certain boy wizard series written decades after this published in 1968 wouldn’t exist without this book.
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
It’s 2024 in Southern California and the world is literally burning, due to devastating climate change and a drug called pyro that sends its users into pyromaniacal rampages. Teenage Lauren has only ever known the small universe of her gated neighborhood where life is limited and resources are sparse, but at least they are safe behind its walls.
As a result of her mother’s drug use, Lauren was born with hyper-empathetic powers wherein she can feel others’ emotions, particularly their pain, which has become a pervasive emotion in this world. When pyro users attack her community, she will use this power and her singular outlook to survive and inspire hope amidst the great suffering she encounters on the outside.
Published in 1993, Butler’s prescience is staggering, and the skill with which she injects humanity into this speculative tale sets Parable apart in the canon. Emotions are power, not weakness, in this captivating story.
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
Have you ever wondered where Shakespeare got his inspiration for Hamlet? This book does just that, beginning in 16th century England with Agnes, a talented, misunderstood woman more at home in the woods than in town, who can divine information about people and heal with potions made from plants. When she falls in love with a latin tutor named William, they build a life gilded by her gifts and scarred by a profound loss that ultimately inspires the play.
The book is a beautiful portrait of universal experiences like adolescence, marriage, and motherhood told through the extraordinary lens of a woman with magical powers.
Matrix by Lauren Groff
Seventeen-year-old Marie is cast out of the royal court for being in love with the Queen and sent to live in a rural nunnery in 12th century England. As she communes with nature and her fellow female outcasts, she transforms the nunnery and its land according to her powerful, ecstatic visions, creating a feminist utopia in the midst of a patriarchal church.
Written with powerful yet tender prose, Marie’s passion and will propels the narrative forward in lush, muscular fashion. It is a compelling and entirely unique depiction of a life lived almost entirely among women and shaped according to their unmitigated imaginations.
The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
One day while driving across a bridge in antebellum Virginia, Hiram, a man born into slavery with a photographic memory, is seized by a sudden memory of the mother he loved, and next thing he knows, his cart has been transported into the water. Through this tragic experience that claims the life of his brother, he discovers that he can transport himself over impossible distances using the power of his vivid memories, particularly of his mother. Using this incredible ability, he strives to secure his freedom and that of others, meeting other magical people along the way.
The power of personal and historical memory fuels the supernatural in this book, in a dynamic metaphor for how these forces can lead to liberation.
Swamplandia! By Karen Russell
Ava Bigtree is a curious, big-hearted thirteen-year-old who has been left alone at her family’s defunct backwoods Florida alligator theme park by her reckless, idealistic father, her doggedly practical brother, and her sister who has the ability to see ghosts. When the sister falls in love with a spirit and disappears to find him in the underworld, Ava sets out to rescue her.
Each member of the Bigtree family is seeking transcendence, but in different ways–through magic, love, fame, fortune, or the elusive “normal life”. The supernatural abilities in this book are somewhat ambiguous, as some of them are proven fraudulent by the end, but part of the beauty of the novel is that it’s never demystified completely.
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
When thirteen-year-old Jojo’s father is released from prison, he, his mother, and his sister set off on a road trip through Mississippi to retrieve him. His mother is an addict who can see the ghost of her brother when she is high. At the prison, the ghost of a boy joins their party, and it seems Jojo has inherited his mother’s ability to see spirits when he listens to his story, uncovering a piece of history long buried.
Addiction itself offers supernatural abilities in this book, demonstrating how being high can often feel magically transcendent. But Jojo is able to see ghosts without the drugs, and his power seems to come from inheritance as well as the force of the past and its enduring pain that still lives in the land under his feet.
Boys of Alabama by Genevieve Hudson
Teenage Max has just arrived in rural Alabama from Germany with two secrets–he is gay, and he can bring dead things back to life. He will have to protect these secrets carefully as he navigates this toxically masculine, viciously Christian, and football-obsessed new landscape, oscillating between trying to fit in and making friends with the local witch boy.
The intertwining of queerness and magic is beautifully done here. While his powers may not have come from this rural place, their consequences brilliantly illuminate the danger and complexity of the setting.
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