The book flips between Boo's time as a boy on Sweetpatch Island from 1967 to 1971, and the year 1997, with the untimely death of his father, the local doctor on the island who is found dead under odd circumstances, causing Boo to have to return home to deal with the fallout.
Throughout the book's 710 pages, we are introduced to a voluminous list of characters, like those in Boo's current life such as Elgin Highsmith, his dear friend and partner in his construction business; Sandy Baker, his lovely blonde girlfriend with aspirations of being his wife; Allen Noble, his friend and attorney and the person who introduced him to Sandy; and, of course, his mother, MaeEllen Taylor, the consummate Southern lady of the manor. The cast of characters from his boyhood is far larger, but focuses primarily on his devoted nanny/housekeeper, Laylee Colebriar; Gussie Dutton, the flame-haired beauty who captured his heart when he was just a boy; Solomon and Royal Goody, black brothers who couldn't be more different; and Boo's crew of hooligans he pals around with on the island, Dewey Fitch, Lester Meggett, Hoss Beaudry, Ash Marchant, and a few others I forget. Then there are those whose ghost stories are passed down, such as Bathsheba Tribbit and her husband, Joker Tribbitt, Mamie Stuvant, Crystal Burnes, the Beast and so on. Sheba and Joker Tribbitt worked for the wealthy LaValle family who owned Chaliboque plantation, until Joker became too proud and well-respected among his brethren and was perceived as a threat, so a group of local white men lynched him. His wife, Sheba, was rumored to be a witch that came from the Caribbean and she supposedly placed a curse on the descendants of those responsible. This theme runs throughout the story as people die suspiciously. Mamie Stuvant, Crystal Burnes, and the Beast, these are other characters who both beguile and frighten the local white population of Sweetpatch, for better or worse.
The story unfolds very slowly and Fad feeds the reader bits and pieces so you can put together the puzzle of what really happened on Sweetpatch Island way back when, until the present, and part of how he does it is with Royal Goody, who grew up to not only be the local Vice Principal for the high school, but also an enthusiast of the island's folk tales and genealogy.
Throughout the tale, Boo is trying to unravel something that happened to him recently when he thought he hit a beast of some sort with his car (spoiler alert - you never find out what actually happened); what happened to his father when he had a heart attack in a strange rental home in the wrong part of the island; who is truly responsible for the deaths of two local boys; and whether Sheba Tribbitt, Mamie Stuvant, Laylee Colebriar, and Crystal Burne are actually witches or are they just mysterious black women of the island?
Boo will have to face his past, learn about his heritage, and hope to survive a deadly hurricane and save the women he loves before it's all over. If this sounds intriguing to you, King of Nod might just be your new favorite book. Ghostly tales of deadly violence are plentiful here, but be warned if you are a sensitive reader because so do numerous acts of racism and other unpleasant potential triggers such as incestual rape, child rape, maybe a touch of cannibalism but it was never clarified, plus hate crimes such as cutting throats, dragging until the skin peels off, lynching, burning, and being eaten by dogs - and all of that was just poor Joker Tribbitt. No wonder his wife cursed that island!
There were parts of this book that I really enjoyed and couldn't wait to see the different mysteries solved, and there are other parts that really annoyed me. For a book over 15 years old, there's no excuse for it to have typos. While there weren't a lot of them, come on! You've had 15 years to fix these. I also didn't really enjoy the Epilogue. I guess a big part of me was hoping to have the loose end mysteries explained here, but no. There was some extending of the book in that several of the characters were revisited some 25 years after the events of the original story, and fans of the book's first release would probably eat this up just to get a little more of the story. It was fine, but it didn't answer any lingering questions for me, which just left me disappointed.
Overall, if loose ends don't bother you and you really like a good creepy ghost story, you might just fall in love with this book. I will say it took me a few chapters to get into it because it's very flowery and super descriptive. I can appreciate setting a tone, but it was nearly purple prose, at least until the view switched to the "present" of 1997. I'm not sorry I read King of Nod, but it is quite an investment at 710 pages and I just wish the payoff and explanations of the ghostly parts were a little less vague. If it didn't finish with loose ends, I probably would have loved it. I can tell you I was left with lots of loud feelings about the book once I finished reading it, and I don't think I would have felt so strongly if I didn't care about the book. Take my opinion with a grain of salt.
