Christina Henry on Wrigleyville, the Heart of Horror, and Standing Tall

Christina Henry’ latest release, The Place Where They Buried Your Heart, hits bookstores Nov.4. It is all at once haunted house horror tale and ode to what makes Chicago truly great – the people – despite the monsters we face in our homes and beyond. Henry’s main character, Jessie, dares her little brother to enter a storied abandon house on their block just to get him out of her room. He accepts and never comes home again. Grappling with what happened to her brother, Jessie faces the monstrous house and its growing powers every day. It’s a David versus Goliath tale, a love letter to community, and a story that demands reading curled up near a window, watching your own neighborhood this fall.

I spoke with Henry about the true heart of horror, the staying power of cities, and different ways to fight the good fight.

The Place Where They Buried Your Heart is so much more than a horror tale. What influenced you to write this type of horror where the pull to keep reading goes beyond the spook and gore?

I think that horror has a bad reputation. Folks think that it’s just a bunch of ‘80s slasher movies, immortal killers with shiny knives chopping up teenagers. A lot of horror is actually about processing the most intense emotions we have around love, loss, fear, grief, anger, aging, racism, sexism, change. Ira Levin’s THE STEPFORD WIVES is ultimately about men who are furious that their wives might prioritize something other than them and their comfort. Cynthia Pelayo’s VANISHING DAUGHTERS is about a woman who simply cannot cope with the death of her mother. There are many horrors that happen in these books, but emotion is at the heart. I think that, broadly, horror wants to grapple with the hardest things in our lives.

Family dynamics, toxic or positive, often play a huge role in horror. If you think about something like Stephen King’s CARRIE – it’s not really about the supernatural events at the end. It’s about a girl who’s been abused her whole life by her religious extremist mother, and that’s the horror here—that everyone in town just looked away and let it happen.

The neighborhood feels like you could walk down a Chicago street and find it. Was the location, or lore, based on anything in real life?

This book is definitely a love letter to Wrigleyville—the architecture of the neighborhood and the kinds of people who put down roots in Chicago neighborhoods play a big role in the book. When I first moved to this part of Chicago 20 years ago there was a gentleman who lived down the block who was 100 years old. He had lived here his whole life and he was filled with wonderful stories about how the place had changed and grown. He passed when he was 102, and now his son lives in that building. I think people who don’t live in cities think that the residents of a city are transitory, that people come here and live for a few years and then settle down elsewhere and have a family. But lots of people have families in cities (I’m one of them), and lots of people become part of the fabric of that place.

Jessie, the narrator of the book, is one of those rare self-determined people who no matter what they face, they continue to push forward, to protect what is theirs, to stand strong despite the quake in their knees. What was it like to capture fear in a character like Jessie?

I think Jessie is actually more scared than she admits to herself. This terrible inciting event in the book—the death of her little brother—cascades over her family and breaks it apart. The thing that killed her brother, a malevolent house, just exists on her block, sitting there. She has to pass it by and look at it and know, even in sleep, that it’s there, always present. So she puts her chin up and tries to pretend it isn’t. She walks on the other side of the street. But deep down, she’s afraid, and she would do almost anything to make it go away.

There are a multitude of family structures and dynamics portrayed in the novel. What made you want to have characters find comfort – or oftentimes not – in the people closest to them in unexpected ways?

One of the big themes of the book is that Jessie’s parents seem to care more about her dead brother than her living self. They are holding on to the memory of the way their family used to be, and in the process they are letting their daughter go. But there are other people in the neighborhood who see her, who look out for her, and who ultimately love her.

I think it’s important to show that families are complex, that tragedy doesn’t always bring everyone together. It’s also just as important to show there can be other people out there who care, who can become your family when the one you’re born into fails.

There is an underlying oath that Jessie and her chosen family have taken, and that is to not let the monster drive them out. Can you talk about how this theme resonates beyond a ghoulish house?

Not everyone has a monster house on their block. They probably have something in their life that’s standing in their way, though. We’re all out here trying to achieve some kind of happiness and coping with the things that disrupt our peace. Maybe you can’t defeat a monster in the physical sense. But maybe you can find a way to stand tall, keep your chin up, stay in the fight until the monster isn’t in your way anymore. Maybe you look out for the people in your life and do the best you can every day. Sometimes that’s enough.

The Place Where They Buried Your Heart (Berkley) is available wherever you buy books on Nov. 4. To find out more about Christina Henry and her other books, visit christinahenry.net.