While gathered around the family dinner table, teenaged Tyler Grant teasingly asks his father, "If you had to let somebody die, o padre mio, who would it be: your own kid or the rest of our town?" Many parents have had to field an equivalent question from their children at some point. However, in Dutch novelist Thomas Olde Heuvelt's Hex, the haunting presence of the immortal witch Katherine van Wyler serves as a sewn-mouth-and-eyes reminder of the possibilities such a question encompasses. For more than 350 years, van Wyler, the Black Rock Witch, has roamed the small New England town of Black Spring. The secret of her existence is contained jointly by the United States government and Black Rock citizens; her powers are somewhat constrained by the stitching that seals her eyes and most of her mouth. Containment, however, is incomplete: through one removed stitch, she can whisper and drive people to horrifying suicide.
Thick atmosphere, disturbing imagery and an almost unbearable tension pervade this narrative. Heuvelt develops a series of indelible scenes as the citizens of Black Spring are pushed to their psychological limits in dealing with the malignant presence among them. The tension is the strongest element of the story, and its apogee so high that what follows is almost a letdown--a horrifying, relief-fueled letdown. This is not a real weakness, but rather a testament to what Hex has led the readers up to. --Evan M. Anderson, collection development librarian, Kirkendall Public Library, Ankeny, Iowa