According to people smarter than me (okay, some random site on the internet), the characteristics of southern gothic literature are: isolation and marginalization, violence and crime, sense of place, freakishness and the grotesque, destitution and decay, oppression and discrimination. Delivery Me rings every one of those bells, including sense of place, even though the novel is set in Missouri, which isn’t technically in the south. I would argue that “the south” isn’t always geographical—it can also be a state of mind. Hell, there are parts of my home state of Ohio that are every bit of “the south” as Alabama. But I digress.

Deliver Me is an audacious, unsparing, deeply disturbing work of southern gothic storytelling. For me, it brought to mind the work of Flannery O’Conner and Harry Crews, novels like Bastard Out of Carolina, Swamplandia, and Beloved. Good company to keep, and Nash absolutely belongs there.

Deliver Me explores, in merciless detail, what happens when ordinary human wants, needs, and desires—friendship, to love and be loved, to have children, to find comfort in religion—curdle into ugly, toxic obsession.

Dee-Dee, the main character, has a soul-crushing job in a chicken processing plant, a shady live-in boyfriend with an exotic insect fascination, and a longing for motherhood after multiple miscarriages. When Sloan, her BFF from the past, appears back in town after 20 years, Dee-Dee descends into a tailspin with ever-escalating consequences. The ending, when it comes, feels almost pre-ordained, but is no less devastating for that.

Elle Nash is an uncompromising talent. She has the voice of a depraved poet, an unflinching eye, and a willingness to take the reader to places they are not prepared to go. There are scenes here that I will never forget, even if I wanted to. This is a brave, vital, important novel. I think it will possibly be too much for some readers, and that’s okay. Myself, I couldn’t turn away, even when I sometimes wanted to. Deliver Me is a haunting masterpiece.