The monster within: New novel explores loss, resiliency in coal country

‘We Sent Them Down Singing’ is writer Libby Edwardson’s debut horror novel

July 28, 2026

By Annie Means

Edwardson’s nuanced portrait of Appalachia is built from personal experiences and the region’s rich history. Photo courtesy of Libby Edwardson.

BLUE HILL—Local writer, librarian, and educator Libby Edwardson released her first horror novel, We Sent Them Down Singing, on July 21.

The book follows Phinnie “Skinny” Caldwell as she reckons with the return of the man she believes is responsible for her mother’s disappearance. Set in a small coal camp in West Virginia, Edwardson skillfully eschews the “Hillbilly Horror” stereotypes that are so often associated with the Appalachian landscape.

Rather than trading in images of poverty and abuse, the story turns its attention to what has been taken from the land, and what that taking has left behind: a terrifying monster.

Though originally from Iowa, Edwardson spent a large portion of her life in Appalachia, a place she said she loves—but has a complicated relationship with. In many ways, she wrote this novel to set the record straight about a place she once called home, pushing back against harmful narratives about the region.

“Especially in horror about Appalachia, the stereotypes aren’t just boring and tired, they’re actively harmful,” Edwardson said.

Instead, she leans on the area’s geology. The Appalachian mountains are among the oldest on Earth, so old that when Pangea broke apart, it left behind a trapped remnant of the Iapetus Ocean, an underground sea whose salt-water springs still surface in West Virginia today.

That ancient, buried landscape is where the novel’s monster comes from.

“I wanted the monster to represent what is really scary about the region: its greed,” Edwardson said.

It’s a fitting origin story. The region’s history is one of extraction: logging, coal, and now data centers. Each generation has found a new way to raze the land and pull its wealth out from under it.

The people of Appalachia have always sought to resist that extraction. Edwardson noted that the largest labor uprising in American history, the Battle of Blair Mountain, took place in West Virginia mining camps and gave birth to the term “redneck.” Union fighters distinguished themselves from federal forces, state militias, and Baldwin-Felts detectives by tying red bandanas around their necks during the guerrilla fighting.

Edwardson’s own work has long sought to champion people-centric movements and combat false narratives. While living on the border of Kentucky and West Virginia and working as a librarian, Edwardson served as the Outreach Librarian and Bookmobile Operator for the Bell County Public Library.

At the time, Kentucky had one of the lowest adult literacy rates, and Edwardson’s job was to ensure education and reading materials were made available to folks who lived in hard-to-reach areas.

Appalachia’s ancient, buried landscape is where the novel’s monster comes from. Photo by Emily Baer.

Later, she co-founded 52 Weeks of Giving, a volunteer group that was formed in response to the poverty she witnessed around her. Every Friday, she and a group of underserved children in Kentucky came together to do an act of service. Participants volunteered at the local, state, national, and international levels, to ensure that the kids in the program were exposed to as wide a worldview as possible.

“Everybody benefits by being shown they have something to offer,” Edwardson said.

The program was originally designed to last one year, but it kept going for nearly five years.

52 Weeks of Giving was so successful that it was featured on ABC’s Good Morning America and was honored at Disney’s “Hometown Heroes” event.

Edwardson and her family now live in Blue Hill. She and her husband, who works for the National Park Service, moved from Kentucky in search of a place that felt like home. They wanted to be somewhere in the Northeast that had good schools, LGBTQ+-friendly communities, and a strong arts scene.

Since arriving, Edwardson has served as the Youth Services librarian at the Blue Hill Library and as manager of the Creative Aging Project. She now works full time as an author.

For information about We Sent Them Down Singing, upcoming readings and events visit https://libbyedwardson.com/.