UNIVERSITY CENTER, MI — Just in time for Halloween, Montag Press announces the publication of former Michigan Notable Book Award winner J.C. Vande Zande’s novel, “Blood of the Witness Tree.” Set in Michigan’s Pigeon River State Forest, “Blood of the Witness Tree” is the sequel to Vande Zande’s contemporary gothic horror novel, “The Dance of Rotten Sticks,” which also features a northern lower-Michigan setting.

“A true American horror story–born in the woods, steeped in memory, and soaked in dread,” writes Mathias Clasen, co-director of the Recreational Fear Lab and author of “Why Horror Seduces.”

“Set deep in Michigan’s Pigeon River Forest, “Blood of the Witness Tree” taps into the rich, unsettling current that has always run through American literature–from the spectral woods of Hawthorne and the brooding seas of Melville to Poe’s psychological dread and Irving’s haunted legends. Here, that current winds its way into the present.”

On Oct. 1, Vande Zande will be at the Detroit Public Library to give a talk about gothic horror and then to read from his own work. Vande Zande teaches creative writing and film at Delta College near Saginaw. He can be reached at jeffvandezande@gmail.com.