Johanna Van Veen’s debut Gothic horror novel, My Darling Dreadful Thing, was a Bram Stoker Award nominee, and her sophomore novel, Blood on Her Tongue, became an instant USA Today Bestseller. Both journey into historical settings, as does her latest release, Bone of My Bone, set in Germany during the ruthless Thirty Years’ War. It explores the convergence of three horror subgenres: folk, historical, and religious. As well as the effects of war on everyday people.
Johanna Van Veen sat down with Cemetery Dance to discuss her new release, Bone of My Bone.
You can connect with her on Instagram and at johannavanveen.com.
(Interview conducted by Haley Newlin)
This article contains descriptions of sexual assault.
CEMETERY DANCE: Your new book, Bone of My Bone, takes place in 1635, during the Thirty Years’ War. What was it about this period that first interested you?
JOHANNA VAN VEEN: I have loved the early modern period ever since I read the middle-grade novel I, Coriander by Sally Gardner. In fact, I love it so much that I specialized in early modern literature and early modern book history! It was only a matter of time until I set one of my novels during this period. I chose the Thirty Years’ War specifically rather than some other war because I believe it is the perfect setting for a horror novel: if we look at the percentage of civilian deaths, it is the most deadly conflict to date, in no small part due to the war-caused famine and the plague that spread more easily due to the movements of the troops.
Bone of My Bone features classic icons historically associated with good and evil, such as God and the Devil, and sinners and saints, but also explores the crime of complicity. How do you think this particular evil played a role in the endurance of the Thirty Years’ War? What about this do you think lends itself to a horror story so effectively?
The Thirty Years’ War is a complicated war with multiple causes. That being said, religion was a major factor. For decades, Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists had been forced to live together, each believing the others to be emissaries of Satan. It was only a matter of time until those religious differences would lead to violence, but I don’t think anyone expected that violence to be on such a large scale and to last this long. We certainly see that the motivations of men joining as soldiers change throughout this war: initially, many men joined to defend their religion, but also because they wanted adventure and glory, or sometimes out of loyalty to their local lord. By the end of the war, most people who joined did so because they were tired of being brutalized, and in a dog-eat-dog world, they’d rather become a perpetrator than a victim. Indeed: when the war was finally over, an entire generation had grown up knowing nothing but war, making it hard for people to adjust to ordinary civilian life.
When violence becomes normalized and when anyone can turn on you for (almost) no reason, people become numb to the suffering of others and selfish in order to survive. Why speak up about your fellow soldiers sexually assaulting a peasant girl you don’t even know? They might turn on you instead, and that peasant girl would probably knife you if given half the chance. Easier to say and do nothing.
Such complicity lends itself perfectly to a horror novel because, even though we all disapprove of it, it is also easy to understand and relate to. Most of us haven’t beaten someone up, let alone killed them, but most of us probably have encountered a situation where we didn’t act or perhaps waited for someone else to act first. Social media is full of clips of people being harassed or assaulted and (almost) no one intervening. For all that we like to think ourselves heroes, we’re much more likely to become bystanders instead. As Edmund Burke said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” and oh, how much easier that is than to act!
Why do you think it was important to focus on the everyday people in Bone of My Bone, like your characters Elsebeth and Sister Ursula, rather than the political power players during the Thirty Years’ War?
I think this focus on ordinary people makes it easier for the reader to truly understand the consequences of this war. If we read about regions where 90% of the population died, that’s pretty horrible in and of itself, but it’s also abstract; if we read about the plague scything through a family, of famine turning people into living skeletons and cannibals, of soldiers torturing and raping and murdering because they have nothing better to do and they’re paranoid about the peasant population killing them instead, then suddenly that number turns into lived human experience, and thus something we can feel and relate to.
Did you find yourself aligning with one character more so than the other? Particularly, either Sister Ursula or Elsebeth?
I align with both of them, but for different reasons! I am not religious myself, and in this respect therefore found it a bit easier to relate to Elsebeth, who has lost her faith because she can not reconcile the horrors she has lived through and sees around her with the idea of an all-loving God. At the same time, I am absolutely an optimist, and as such can relate to Sister Ursula, whose belief in a better world and the power of love and kindness keeps her going.
I also believe that both Protestantism and Catholicism have their strengths and weaknesses; traditional Protestantism argues for the right to interpret the Bible yourself and as such encourages intellectualism, which I am in favor of. At the same time, I find the idea of (pre)determination very hard to swallow, and side more with the Catholic idea that what you do in life matters and nothing is set in stone. I also love the Catholic aesthetic; they really know how to create gorgeous art and they love a good corpse, which I can only admire!
Bone of My Bone has been called historical and religious horror, but you mentioned in the author’s note that you also see it as folk horror. Can you explain why that is and how you think the three sub-genres support each other in Bone of My Bone?
Folk horror is usually characterized by a rural, isolated setting in which naïve outsiders are confronted with the pagan beliefs/superstitions of the locals. Bone of My Bone has that rural, isolated setting, and you can easily read Sister Ursula as the naïve outsider who is confronted with (Elsebeth’s beliefs in) supernatural creatures that do not strictly adhere to a Christian belief system (although Elsebeth’s beliefs were common for people in that place and time period). I think it’s easy to combine the three: folk horror and religious horror can easily thrive in historical periods (maybe even more so than in contemporary horror). They already overlap, and when combined, can really enhance each other.
I know you’re a big reader and cinephile. Do you have any book recommendations or favorite films from each of the sub-genres mentioned above?
Oh boy, do I!
Historical horror
Books
- Midnight Rooms, The Sunken, The Adored by Donyae Coles
- The Brides by Charlotte Cross
- Those Across the River by Christopher Buehlman
- Carrion Crow by Heather Parry
Movies
- The Devil’s Bath
- The Terror (series)
- Crimson Peak
- Pan’s Labyrinth
- The Others
- The Woman in Black
Religious horror
Books
- The Possession of Alba Diaz by Isabel Cañas
- Come Closer by Sara Gran
- The Rotting Room by Viggy Parr Hampton
Movies
- Saint Maud
- The Conjuring
- Incantation
- The Exorcism of Emily Rose
- Heretic
Folk horror
Books
- Slewfoot by Brom
- Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
- Lute by Jennifer Thorne
- Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley
- Lost in the Garden by Adam S. Leslie
- Knock Knock Open Wide by Neil Sharpson
- Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
Movies
- Apostle
- Oddity
- The VVitch
- The Blair Witch Project
- You Won’t Be Alone
- Le Vourdalak
- Antrum
- His House
- True Detective (series)
- Midsommar
- The Ritual
