Screw adages. From now on, I am judging books by their covers. 20 pages into Tales from Blue Springs: The Hatchet Woman, the first published novella from R. Garth, I had no idea what I was reading. It was a mish-mosh of serene nature travelogue, Native American spirituality, and primitive killing. So I flipped the book over to check out the synopsis, and found only a single author’s blurb , which concluded with, “say what you will about the author, the story is fine.” If that is the nicest thing someone can say about a book, maybe it shouldn’t be at the top of your reading list.

The Hatchet Woman is supposed to be a Southern gothic romance, according to the minimal information I received with this book. It tells the tale of Sarah, a young girl who faced heinous abuse which culminated in her murdering her adoptive parents when, at age 13, her mother killed the baby Sarah had just birthed – who was fathered by dear ol’ dad. Sarah hides in a cave which becomes her home; the forest, her safe haven. She turns feral, living by moonlight, eating raw meat, going without clothing, following her instincts.

She becomes the thing of legend, a ghost story to tell around the campfire after she tries to kill herself by burning alive in the cabin she gave birth in. A rescue attempt leaves her severely disfigured, and the eyeball dangling from its socket becomes her trademark. Well, that and her best friend, her trusty hatchet, which never leaves her side. She killed her parents with it; she kills her food with it; she even uses it to masturbate.

It sounds like all the elements to make a fantastically bizarre story. But it doesn’t feel like a complete story. You get little snippets at a time, but not the whole picture. The past and present are interwoven, but I get the feeling that the present is only offered as an excuse to give backstory in a more “interesting” manner. The chapters alternate between third person narrative telling Sarah’s story, and an awkward second person narrative from “your” P.O.V.

Sarah is inconsistent as a character – sometimes she is animalistic, sometimes she seems like a normal girl. Vignettes are offered that go nowhere, like when “you” throw your back out and have to have “daddy” come and take care of you. The story starts to veer towards the supernatural, for example, when Sarah is initially presented as a ghost. Then the story goes back to reality -- such as during the attempt to explain how Sarah was able to survive after her suicide attempts -- but then goes right back to supernatural: Sarah’s only friend is a bear who can talk; Sarah transforms herself into a woman (think Bugs Bunny’s version of a woman) so that she can mate with a human male; Sarah births a half-bear, half-man child.

And here is what I will say about the author: Garth is not a particularly good writer. Commas and quotation marks were so overused that I thought my eyes would bleed. Sentence structure was choppy, grammar was sloppy, and tense was inconsistent. Admittedly, about halfway through the slender, 100-page volume, I did get semi-sucked in. The sick and twisted parts of The Hatchet Woman were plentiful enough for me to want to see what the author would come up with next, but I don’t think I would have made it through if it had been much longer.