This Wretched Valley

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“If you love wilderness horror, This Wretched Valley is a must-read. But be forewarned: after reading this chilling debut, you may never want to set foot in the great outdoors again.”—Alma Katsu, author of The Hunger and The Fervor

Take only pictures. Leave only bones.

This trip is going to be Dylan’s big break. Her geologist friend Clay has discovered an untouched cliff face in the Kentucky wilderness, and she is going to be the first person to climb it. Together with Clay, his research assistant Sylvia, and Dylan’s boyfriend Luke, Dylan is going to document her achievement on Instagram and finally cement her place as the next rising star in rock climbing.

Seven months later, three bodies are discovered in the trees just off the highway. All are in various states of decay: one a stark, white skeleton; the second emptied of its organs; and the third a mutilated corpse with the tongue, eyes, ears, and fingers removed.

But Dylan is still missing—and no trace of her, dead or alive, has been discovered.

Were the climbers murdered? Did they succumb to cannibalism? Or are their impossible bodies the work of an even more sinister force? 

This dread-inducing debut builds to a bloodcurdling climax, and will leave you shocked by the final twist.“A hallucinatory nightmare of a novel that blends adventure, horror, and historical fiction and isn’t shy about violence or strangeness.”—New York Times

“Kiefer’s debut heralds the arrival of a major new horror talent. Through vivid descriptions of the creepy setting and thoughtful character portraits, Kiefer maintains a feeling of unease and nail-biting tension throughout. Devotees of daylight horror will be entranced.”—Publisher’s Weekly, ★ starred review 

“A terrifying debut, rendered with the intensity and skill of Scott Smith’s cult favorite The Ruins and touches of The Hunger by Alma Katsu and Echo by Thomas Olde Heuvelt. The novel announces Kiefer’s intentions to boldly begin her climb to the top of the genre.”—Library Journal, ★ starred review

“Kiefer’s gory and intense debut centers on a doomed rock-climbing expedition beset by horrors both human and supernatural. Kiefer, a climber herself, utilizes her knowledge of the sport to deliver an evocative and pulse-pounding survival horror novel inspired by the Dyatlov Pass incident. This disturbing outing marks her as a writer to watch and will appeal to fans of Scott Smith’s The Ruins (2006) and the Showtime series Yellowjackets.”—Booklist

“Despite being the author’s debut novel, This Wretched Valley is a glittering contender for Best Horror of 2024…this book is unshakeable.”—Cemetery Dance

“If you love wilderness horror, This Wretched Valley is a must-read. But be forewarned: after reading this chilling debut, you may never want to set foot in the great outdoors again.”—Alma Katsu, author of The Hunger and The Fervor

“This propulsive, hair-raising read will have you jumping at shadows and second-guessing your next trek into the woods. With nimble pacing, scream-worthy scares, and an ever-present sense of dread, a trip to This Wretched Valley is one you’ll never forget. A standout debut.”—Rachel Harrison, national best-selling author of Cackle and Such Sharp Teeth

“Twisty and brutal, Jenny Kiefer’s debut unfolds like your favorite creepy new horror flick. Welcome to This Wretched Valley, where everything bleeds.”—Christopher Golden, New York Times best-selling author of All Hallows and Road of Bones

“A dread-inducing Kentucky spin on the Dyatlov Pass incident, This Wretched Valley drops its readers right into uncharted territory without a compass and demands we navigate our way out alive and in one piece. Not since Scott Smith’s The Ruins has a novel imbued a region with such desperate horror.”—Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Ghost Eaters and What Kind of Mother

“[This Wretched Valley is] horror that challenges our perceptions and understanding of the physical world, and that distorts our reality, [with] all of the elements I look for in horror—folklore, an environment that is a character itself, and characters trying to understand and survive through a horrific situation.”—Cynthia Pelayo, Bram Stoker Award–winning author of Children of Chicago and The Shoemaker’s Magician

“This Wretched Valley made me nervous to keep going; not many books can do that. There’s a heaviness to the dread, and Kiefer layers looming atmosphere onto gripping desperation with a masterful touch. Forget the outdoors—stay inside with this enthralling book instead.”—Hailey Piper, Bram Stoker Award–winning author of Queen of Teeth

“This Wretched Valley is a fast-paced free fall straight into a Kentucky nightmare. Kiefer’s prose sings in this horrific tragedy of blood and dread and paranoia. The story will drag you kicking and screaming into the night and will not let you go. I lost sleep over it. Highly recommended.”—Todd Keisling, Bram Stoker Award–nominated author of Devil’s Creek and Cold, Black, and Infinite

“This Wretched Valley is a reality-warping, body-horror, don’t-go-into-the-woods nightmare which grips from its very first sentence. Kiefer deftly weaves something Dyatlov Pass–shaped from her characters’ hubris and pain, leading them to a ghastly and inevitable end sure to delight fans of The Troop or Blair Witch. A truly unforgettable debut.”—Ally Wilkes, Bram Stoker Award–nominated author of All the White Spaces

“This Wretched Valley is suspenseful, mysterious, and filled with racing adrenaline and paranoia. Jenny Kiefer calls us to question reality along with the novel’s characters and haunts us with repeating pasts and rotting bones both refleshed and unfleshed.”—Ai Jiang, Nebula and Locus Award finalist and author of Linghun

“Jenny Kiefer takes one of the most intriguing and horrific mysteries of the last century—the Dyatlov Pass incident—and pushes beyond our worst imaginings. An isolated valley and ominous small-town warnings set the stage for a skillful and bone-chilling tale of isolation and the limits of human endurance. Kiefer skillfully weaves historical horror into a modern-day setting, and the result is a deliciously adrenaline-laden nightmare. A fantastic debut that keeps all its promises.”—Laurel Hightower, author of Below and Crossroads

“Jenny Kiefer’s debut novel, This Wretched Valley, is rich with poisonous paranoia and a steadily climbing dread. By the time you realize that you are lost in this book’s clutches, you’ll think twice about ever camping in the woods again.”—P. L. McMillan, author of Sisters of the Crimson Vine

“Set deep in the backwoods of eastern Kentucky, This Wretched Valley by Jenny Kiefer took me to a place I’d never want to go, yet found myself completely unable to leave. What started off as a Michael Crichton–like adventure soon gave way to something more reminiscent of Jennifer McMahon’s The Winter People and Scott Smith’s The Ruins. A ghost story on steroids, with wonderfully disturbing images laced throughout. I don’t think I’ll ever go hiking again!” —J. H. Markert, author of The Nightmare Man

“Reading This Wretched Valley, you will find malice dangling from every branch while an old hunger gathers beneath your feet. Eerie, vicious, and unforgettably Kiefer.”—Andrew F. Sullivan, author of The Marigold and The Handyman Method Jenny Kiefer is a Kentucky native and an avid rock climber. Together with her mother, she is the owner and manager of Butcher Cabin Books, an all-horror bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky. This is her debut novel.OCTOBER 2019

What baffled them was the skeleton.
     The other bodies were weird, but they couldn’t figure out the fucking skeleton. Just bones, no soft tissue: Not one scrap of skin left. No sinews, no rotting brain, no nothing. The bones were arranged together, each one of the two hundred six in its place, a kneecap hidden by new fall leaves. Had the group resorted to cannibalism? It was one of the early guesses. But even that did not seem to fit. The bones wouldn’t be so clean, arranged perfectly, as if they belonged to a knocked-over classroom display, sans bolts. There were no scorch marks, no scratches or other signs of instruments, and surely any form of cannibalism that left such a pristine skeleton behind would have required at the very least a blade to peel the flesh. And besides, the group had been experienced hikers.
     The coroners and first responders could make guesses about the state of the other bodies—animals, perhaps, though they had not observed wildlife in the area, had not even heard the flap of wings overhead or the crunching of leaves beneath a swift mammal’s paw—but this fucking set of bones. It was wrong to move them, the investigators thought, even as they placed them into the evidence bags, each bone lifting away like gravel, no tendons or fat to hold them together; like putting a complicated puzzle back in the box after hours spent piecing the cardboard together.
     Was the skeleton from a decades-old death, some hunter who shot himself in the woods? That had been the second guess, that the dried bones belonged to another of the numerous missing persons from the surrounding area, but dental records confirmed that the immaculate set of bones belonged to Sylvia Burnett, a graduate student studying native plants and geology at the University of Kentucky. She’d been part of a research trip with another student, Clay Foster, and two climbers.
     She had last been seen at a diner in Livingston, Kentucky, seven months prior with the other two hikers whose bodies they’d found, both bizarrely well preserved, and, like Sylvia’s skeleton, odd enough to keep the first responders who had packed them into vans and the coroners who autopsied them conjuring theory after theory.
     Had a squirrel plucked out Luke Woodhaven’s eyes, thinking them a rare breed of nut? But how had his tongue been removed, they wondered, staring into his decaying mouth, inhaling the worst case of halitosis. Their sense of wonder overrode their sense of smell as they examined, once again, the entirely too-straight line that was the end of his tongue, terminating just beyond his last set of molars.
     Had a coyote feasted on the intestines of Clay? But how had his rib cage come to be folded outward like cabinet doors, as if a set of hinges existed on either side of his body? And why was his blood missing? Had it evaporated? Why was he naked? 
     And where was the fourth hiker? Was she roaming the woods? Or had they simply not pressed far enough into the trees to discover her? All they had recovered of Dylan Prescott was a set of blood-soaked clothing at the abandoned campsite that raised further questions. The largest stains came back from forensics as unidentified and belonging to none of the four campers. Their theorizing continued long after the morticians had pushed the bodies into the crematorium and placed the resulting cremains in boxes. Each spare moment at work no longer spent idly scrolling their phones, but puzzling over the detailed logs and the thousands of photographs. It was not uncommon for the coroners to become so engrossed in this work that they would stay past their shifts, alerted to the passing time only by a buzzing in their pockets from spouses waiting at home with cold dinner plates.
     But still they had zero plausible theories as to how Sylvia Burnett had entered the area in March and lost all of her skin, muscles, and organs by October of the same year. In their obsession, they’d even scoured the theories touted online, the lights of their phones burning their retinas late at night: drugs, cults, poisonous plant matter, wild animals. Cryptids. Cannibals. Murder. Another odd piece of the puzzle was that one of the bodies had been found just one hundred yards from the road, nestled in autumn brush. How had the camper not heard the rush of trucks loaded to the brim with cargo roaring down the highway every forty seconds? Another coroner guess: delirium, brought on by exposure and dehydration.
     Vloggers and content creators thought darker, theorizing that Dylan, the missing camper, had murdered the rest of them and was hiding out in the woods. This theory was pushed to its limits when skeptics asked, How would she have removed all of Sylvia’s flesh? How did she preserve Clay’s and her boyfriend Luke’s body? Why? Too many odd pieces that didn’t fit, more discovered every few nights as a detective or coroner or first responder sprang upright in bed, struck by another revelation.
     But, above all, that fucking skeleton.US

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