Whatever it is, it must be illustrated. Several people have seen the young man on the banks of the Mud River with a sketchbook propped on his overlong legs, sketching in subtle grays and stark whites, a hundred shades of velvet black. A children’s book, then,people say, but there’s only one children’s book they know of that has pictures like that.
Lacey, the new manager at Tractor Supply, claims she’s exchanged texts with the redheaded girl （who does look a bit like the young Gravely girl, it must be admitted, although nobody remembers Opal smiling unless she was committing a crime）。 Lacey says she asked what they were working on, and Opal said, a story.
what kind of story?
a true one
Lacey found this intentionally obscure, but she was a bighearted person who had always hoped for the best for Opal, so she offered her thoughts and prayers. Opal stopped responding, and eventually the gossip got old and people stopped talking so much about Starling House.
In spring the sycamores bud out and the honeysuckle goes green, so that you can’t even see the house from the road anymore. Just the wrought-iron gates and the long red lick of the drive, maybe a glimpse of limestone cross-hatched by honeysuckle and greenbriers.
But there are still the dreams, sometimes. You should be afraid—there are stories about this house, and you’ve heard all of them—but in the dream you don’t hesitate.
In the dream, you’re home.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bond, Gemma. Witches, Devils, and Haints: Kentucky’s Haunted History. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2015.
Boone, Calliope. Interview by Charlotte Tucker, July 14, 2016. Interview 13A, transcript and recording, Muhlenberg County Historical Society Archives.
Hagerman, Eileen Michelle. “Water, Workers, and Wealth: How ‘Old Gravely’s’ Coal Barge Stripped Kentucky’s Green River Valley.” The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 115, no. 2 （2017）： 183–221. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44981141.
Higgins, Lyle. Interview by Charlotte Tucker, July 04, 2018. Interview 19A, transcript and recording, Muhlenberg County Historical Society Archives.
hooks, bell. Belonging: A Culture of Place. New York, NY: Routledge, 2009.
Joseph, A. Problems in Paradise: An Environmental History of Kentucky. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002.
Murray, Robert K., and Roger W. Brucker. Trapped!: The Story of Willy Floyd. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999.
Olwen, T. and C. Olwen. “E. Starling: Recluse or Revenant?” April 24, 2017, in Bluegrass Mysteries, podcast （Season 2, Episode 1）。
Rothert, Otto Arthur. A History of Muhlenberg County: With More than 200 Illustrations and a Complete Index.1st ed. Louisville, Kentucky: John P. Morton, 1913.
Simmons, Bitsy. Interview by Charlotte Tucker, October 10, 2015. Interview 12B, transcript and recording, Muhlenberg County Historical Society Archives.
Starlings, The. Starling House Record of Incidents, from the private collection of Opal and Arthur Starling.
Winter, E. The Beasts We Could Not Bury: Sin and the Southern Gothic. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This is the story of Starling House.
It started as a dream, like most houses do. I still lived in Kentucky at the time, but I was getting ready to leave: scrolling real estate sites, boxing up old baby clothes, trying to brainwash our friends into coming with us. I’d left home before—again and again, actually—so the dream I had was a familiar one: that I found a way to stay.
Dreams don’t grow into houses （or books） without the time, talent, labor, love, patience, and sheer will of dozens of people. The unfair thing is that, if they do their work well, it’s mostly invisible by the time guests arrive.
I am grateful to my agent, Kate McKean, who saw the blueprints for this book and not only didn’t burn them, but found the perfect place to start building. To my editor, Miriam Weinberg, who walked through during construction and wondered aloud if we really needed four bedrooms （we did not）。 To Dr. Rose Buckelew, for her inspection of an early draft, and Dr. Natalie Aviles, for connecting us. To the entire production team—Terry McGarry, Dakota Griffin, Rafal Gibek, Steven Bucsok, Lauren Hougen, and Sam Dauer—who patched all the holes and asked, politely, if I meant to put two kitchen sinks right next to each other. To Isa Caban, Sarah Reidy, and Giselle Gonzalez, the marketing and publicity divinities who are the only reason any of you are here. To the cover artist, Micaela Alcaino, and designer, Peter Lutjen, who made this place something worth seeing, and to the legendary Rovina Cai, who graciously hung her work on the walls. And extra thanks to Tessa Villanueva, editorial assistant, without whom I wouldn’t even know who to thank.