Blackwater wolf

Abstract

Rural Kentucky’s cultural and geographical landscapes in the early 1990s serve as the foundation for Blackwater Wolf, a novel that examines the intersections of place, identity, and love. The story follows two young women as they navigate a same-sex relationship in a conservative community, where societal pressures and personal doubts ultimately strain their connection. Separated by circumstance and time, they reunite seventeen years later when the mysterious disappearance of a local child brings them back together. The child’s claim that a monster inhabits the shadow of Black Mountain becomes both a literal mystery and a metaphorical lens through which the protagonists—and the reader—explore memory, trauma, reconciliation, and the boundaries of monstrosity. By blurring the line between reality and the uncanny, Blackwater Wolf seeks to interrogate the ways deeply rooted cultural myths shape personal identity while challenging readers to reconsider what it means to belong, to heal, and to transform in the face of fear and uncertainty.