Jessica Farm HC
304 pages; hard cover; B&W
Jessica Farm opens with an exterior of what could be any Midwestern farmhouse. Once inside, we track our titular heroine (she is a person, not a place) as she bounds out of bed on Christmas morning and goes about her routine, eventually breakfasting with her grandparents. The banality of the situation is subverted by a ratcheting sense of dread as we discover that Jessica's increasingly nightmarish house - where the inside seems bigger than the outside, like Snoopy's doghouse - is filled with creatures around every corner: some whimsical, some sexual, some despairing, and some malevolent. Most terrifying of all is Jessica's father. Will she even get to open the presents under the Christmas tree?