Nella waits

When Lynnette got married four years ago, all she wanted was to flee the confines of her dull hometown deep in the heart of the cornfields of Iowa. After the death of her husband, Lynnette has now returned to her famine-plagued farming town to care for her widowed mother. Looking to escape the boredom of being back home, she visits Jay Van Fleet in the old and eerie Van Fleet house, long rumored to be haunted by the ghost of Nella Van Fleet, Jay’s mother who died during childbirth. Jay, haunted by a horrific near tragedy that shaped his boyhood, has reluctantly returned to his family homestead to claim his inheritance. Both coping with loss, Lynnette and Jay find solace in each other until terrifying and strange events start occurring in the Van Fleet house. The ghost of Jake’s mother, Nella, feeding off the presence of her adored son, grows stronger by the day. She has already killed once for him, and she will kill again to ensure that he belongs to her—and her alone—for all eternity.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction, Romance. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.