Kristi DeMeester’s Dark Sisters is a meticulously layered examination of feminine power, suppressed desire, and the terrible cost of denying one’s complete self. This multi-generational horror novel weaves together three narratives across three centuries—1750, 1953, and 2007—tracing the legacy of a curse born from betrayal and the women who must ultimately reclaim what was stolen from them. The novel operates as both Gothic horror and a searing critique of patriarchal religious structures that have historically weaponized women’s bodies and beliefs against them. At its core, Dark Sisters follows Anne Bolton, a healer facing witchcraft accusations in colonial America; Mary Shephard, a 1950s housewife trapped in a suffocating marriage while conducting a forbidden affair with Sharon Hutchins; and Camilla Burson, a modern-day preacher’s daughter who defies her father’s oppressive church to uncover an ancient power connected to the Dark Sisters—spectral figures haunting the community of Hawthorne Springs. DeMeester’s narrative architecture is ambitious, and she largely succeeds in binding these disparate timelines through the central image of a black walnut tree that serves as both blessing and …