Gothic Horror: Author J.C. Vande Zande

The Dance of Rotten Sticks tells the story of Isaac Fletcher, a recent widower struggling to raise three kids after losing his wife to a bizarre car accident. His mother-in-law, aware of Isaac’s drinking problem, threatens to take the kids. Hoping to become the father they need him to be, Isaac takes the family to their recently-purchased vacation property on Orphan Island. Strange incidents occur, culminating in their discovery of an abandoned orphanage that some say is haunted. Isaac’s youngest begins to hear voices. His eldest has horrific dreams of their dead mother. Only Emily seems to thrive, beguiling Isaac to the true danger that she faces from the island’s other inhabitants.Jeff Vande Zande has dedicated his life to writing and the payoff has been an author who continues to grow as a writer, and his wonderful early short stories have grown into the novel The Dance of Rotten Sticks. Vande Zande’s voice has a thick Michigan accent, echoed in a novel that is in the shape of Michigan’s mitten, with the hand inside it being placed upon a foreboding Ouija board with “a lone beam of light” moving slowly across both.

Michigan author J.C. Vande Zande’s novel, "Blood of the Witness Tree," is set in Michigan’s Pigeon River State Forest. It is a sequel to his contemporary gothic horror novel, "The Dance of Rotten Sticks", which is also set in northern lower-Michigan. He is a professor of creative writing and film production at Delta College in Bay County.

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