This Is My Body
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About the Book
A gripping, emotional, and darkly funny queer horror novel about family trauma and possession, for fans of Rachel Harrison and Catriona Ward.
Single gay mom Brigid always thought that cutting ties with her extremist Catholic family was the best thing she could have done for her daughter, Dylan—and for herself. But when Dylan starts having terrifying fits of unnatural violence, Brigid can’t shake her memories of a girl from her childhood who behaved the same way . . . until Brigid’s uncle, Father Angus, performed an exorcism.
Convinced that her daughter is suffering from demonic possession, Brigid does the thing she told herself she’d never do: she goes home. Father Angus is the worst person she knows, but he’s also the only person who can help her daughter.
But as Brigid starts to uncover secrets about Father Angus, that long-ago exorcism, and her family’s past, she realizes that she and Dylan have never been in more danger.
This Is My Body is a piercing journey into religious trauma and childhood shame, building towards a heart-pounding twisty climax that will spin your head all the way around.
Praise
“This Is My Body is simply one of the finest works of familial horror I have ever encountered. This book is hideously satisfying.”—Sarah Gailey, author of Just Like Home
“A brutal, brilliant story of motherhood, memory, and religion, deviously simple and terribly clever. King-Miller has become one of my must-read authors.”—Gretchen Felker-Martin, author of Cuckoo
“A cathartic tangle of love, rage, and religious trauma. . . . King-Miller explores the fraught dynamics of mothers and daughters, bodily autonomy, and generational curses in an inventive possession tale unlike any you’ve read.”—Hailey Piper, Bram Stoker Award–winning author of Queen of Teeth
“A necessary and unique possession tale, This Is My Body looks religious trauma and queerness straight in the eye. Intense and gory! A great exploration of the spectrum of belief, both worldly and otherworldly.”—Jenny Kiefer, author of This Wretched Valley and Crafting for Sinners
“This Is My Body blends faith and body horror into a queer cosmic romp that would make any exorcist blush. In this fresh possession epic, a marriage made in hell between David Cronenberg and William Peter Blatty, Lindsay King-Miller discovers there are entire chasms left to be purified within the human soul.”—Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes
“Heart-wrenching, propulsive, and always scare-the-fuck-out-of-you terrifying, This Is My Body expertly charts the endless interiors of pain and trauma to uncover the raw, screaming humanity waiting deep within. Lindsay King-Miller’s latest is a vicious, unrelenting tour de force that will rip your guts clean out and show them to you. An absolute triumph.”—Matthew Lyons, author of A Mask of Flies and A Black and Endless Sky
“Gay, gory, and genuine—King-Miller uses her gift for lived-in characters and settings to effortlessly drag the reader through hell and out the other side.”—Mattie Lubchansky, author of Boys Weekend
“A queer, thorny, deeply satisfying novel about religious trauma, the horrors of parenting a middle schooler, the forked tongue of memory, and the dangers of trying to go home again. This Is My Body flips the conventional possession narrative on its head. You think you know what kind of story this is? Oh, sweet child—you have no idea.”—Emily C. Hughes, author of Horror for Weenies
“When I pick up a Lindsay King-Miller book, I know to clear my schedule for the night, because I won’t want to stop turning the pages, nor stop underlining its sharp, musical prose.”—Cynthia Gómez, author of “The Shivering World”
About the Author
Lindsay King-Miller
Lindsay King-Miller is the author of Ask a Queer Chick: A Guide to Sex, Love, and Life for Girls who Dig Girls. Her fiction has appeared in The Fiends in the Furrows, Tiny Nightmares, The Jewish Book of Horror, Fireside Fiction, Baffling Magazine, and numerous other publications. She lives in Denver with her partner and their two children. The Z Word is her first novel.
