Horseman: A Tale of Sleepy Hollow
Christina Henry
Berkley (September 28th, 2021), 302 Pages
Reviewed by Carson Buckingham
Christina Henry has picked up where Washington Irving left off.
She takes us to Tarrytown, New York, thirty years after Brom Bones drove his rival, Ichabod Crane, out of town and away from Katrina Van Tassel, the woman he loved.
The two are now married and caring for their granddaughter, Bente, who lost both her parents, one to disease and the other to something that lurks in the woods. Bente goes by Ben and is a cross-dressing young person who insists that people regard her as a boy, and for the most part, people do. Brom and Katrina will not discuss his parents or anything having to do with the woods and tell him, repeatedly, to stay out of the area; but being a headstrong 14-year-old, he doesn’t listen, and is responsible for several deaths because of it.
One day, while playing in the forbidden forest, he finds the headless and handless body of a schoolmate. But the Headless Horseman was just a legend, right? Or is there something even worse in the woods?
As the deaths mount up, and Ben tries to both find the killer and get the truth about what happened to her father from somebody, Christina Henry draws the reader deep into what might have been after Washington Irving put down his pen. With twists and turns that you won’t see coming, this is the book to read on a stormy night.
And if you listen carefully, you may even hear hoofbeats…
