KUDZU GOSPELIn the mountains of Appalachia, something ancient has found the perfect host-and the perfect prey. Sarah Moss returns to her childhood church in rural Tennessee after months away caring for a dying relative. But something has changed in the congregation. Pastor Ephraim's fingernails are turning green. The kudzu that blankets the mountains grows toward the church with unsettling purpose.
And when the congregation handles the vines like their grandparents once handled serpents, Sarah discovers a horror that makes her long for something as simple as snake venom. The kudzu is no longer just an invasive plant. It carries something far older-a primordial organism that has learned to use the vine's aggressive growth to spread its own terrible purpose. As Sarah's body betrays her and her mind fractures into something alien, she realizes the congregation hasn't been worshipping God.
They've become the soil for something that views humanity as nothing more than particularly rich compost. When Sarah's daughter Lucy arrives from Knoxville, determined to save her mother, she breathes in more than mountain air. The infection doesn't hurt-it feels like coming home, like seeing clearly for the first time. By the time Lucy realizes what's happening, she's already planning her return, already eager to bring others to witness the transformation.
Across the South, in forgotten churches and rural hollows where people drive an hour for fresh milk and nobody important pays attention, similar scenes are unfolding. The kudzu has found the perfect partners: communities bound by faith, isolated by poverty, and ignored by anyone who might have stopped what's coming. Part body horror, part ecological nightmare, and part Southern Gothic meditation on faith and abandonment, KUDZU GOSPEL asks: What if the invasive species we've spent decades fighting was just waiting for the right moment to fight back? And what if we've spent centuries creating the perfect conditions for our own consumption?Some roots run deeper than faith.
Some growth can't be stopped. And in the places where nobody's watching, the world is already changing. A terrifying debut that readers of Jeff VanderMeer, Stephen Graham Jones, and Caitlín R. Kiernan won't be able to put down-or forget.
KUDZU GOSPELIn the mountains of Appalachia, something ancient has found the perfect host-and the perfect prey. Sarah Moss returns to her childhood church in rural Tennessee after months away caring for a dying relative. But something has changed in the congregation. Pastor Ephraim's fingernails are turning green. The kudzu that blankets the mountains grows toward the church with unsettling purpose.
And when the congregation handles the vines like their grandparents once handled serpents, Sarah discovers a horror that makes her long for something as simple as snake venom. The kudzu is no longer just an invasive plant. It carries something far older-a primordial organism that has learned to use the vine's aggressive growth to spread its own terrible purpose. As Sarah's body betrays her and her mind fractures into something alien, she realizes the congregation hasn't been worshipping God.
They've become the soil for something that views humanity as nothing more than particularly rich compost. When Sarah's daughter Lucy arrives from Knoxville, determined to save her mother, she breathes in more than mountain air. The infection doesn't hurt-it feels like coming home, like seeing clearly for the first time. By the time Lucy realizes what's happening, she's already planning her return, already eager to bring others to witness the transformation.
Across the South, in forgotten churches and rural hollows where people drive an hour for fresh milk and nobody important pays attention, similar scenes are unfolding. The kudzu has found the perfect partners: communities bound by faith, isolated by poverty, and ignored by anyone who might have stopped what's coming. Part body horror, part ecological nightmare, and part Southern Gothic meditation on faith and abandonment, KUDZU GOSPEL asks: What if the invasive species we've spent decades fighting was just waiting for the right moment to fight back? And what if we've spent centuries creating the perfect conditions for our own consumption?Some roots run deeper than faith.
Some growth can't be stopped. And in the places where nobody's watching, the world is already changing. A terrifying debut that readers of Jeff VanderMeer, Stephen Graham Jones, and Caitlín R. Kiernan won't be able to put down-or forget.