Richmond writer William S. Tate, whose debut novel, "Medium Normal Ingrid," launches Tuesday with an online event via Fountain Bookstore (Photo courtesy McSweeney Photo)
Ingrid Van Hooten, following her mother’s suicide, is expected by her father to ride out her anguish amid the calm environs of her maternal grandparents in, as the sign proclaims, “Historic Warwick.” Ingrid learns from Burt Gils, the resident nerd, ghost hunter and cemetery groundskeeper, that she’s arrived in the “third most haunted town in the country.”
Something’s weird in Warwick.
Ingrid, her friends, frenemies and eldritch horrors are the creation of Richmonder William S. Tate, and the book, "Medium Normal Ingrid," is published by local press Little Star. Shockoe Slip's Fountain Bookstore hosts a Zoom book launch at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 29.
The twisty-turny Southern Gothic rite of passage story is experienced through the “insomniac eyes” of green-haired and defensively sarcastic Ingrid, who is hearing voices. And she’s supposed to get her head straight in the formerly abandoned home of a prominent judge that her grandparents are restoring.
When not trying to write a history paper for school, she’s hanging around a few of Warwick’s young women who’ve formed a club against having anything to do with the scion Leo, Girls Against Leo Sanford (GALS), because he’s a smooth operator yet Warwick’s most desirable. She also teams up with Burt, who wants to enhance his standing with the Ghosts, Hauntings and Spirits Team (GHAST) by investigating the odd phenomenon in her grandparents’ house. Think small-town Ghostbusters. Burt knows his way around the lingo, what with “classic, level-one manifestation” and EMF anomalies.
While not set in Richmond, there are some familiar glimpses: In a cemetery that resembles Hollywood rises a massive pyramid. And within it … well, I’m not giving that away.
