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Prosperous Southern family whose Victorian beach properties, known as Beldam, are haunted by supernatural entities.

The Elementals is a family drama with otherworldly creepiness that gets more intense toward the final chapters of the book. It’s similar to Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga, also by McDowell, which also mixes supernatural monsters with a saga about a family and dangerous natural elements like storms and rising water.

While Blackwater was a longer saga, requiring patience, the Elementals was a short book with likeable, if odd characters and had a slow build to some exciting climactic scenes. I’m not an expert on Southern literature so my frame of reference is limited. I will say the family reminded me of characters from Tennessee Williams plays.

There’s a theme of evil, dominating mothers, starting with the very name of the haunted property. A Beldam is an“old woman, witch or hag� and a belle dame is a supernatural female creature such as a fairy or banshee, who traps men and lures them to their death. Also, a vengeful “mother nature.� This is more suggested than emphasized; the story begins with the funeral of matriarch Marian Savage and other family members talked about how cruel Marian was but I didn’t see or feel much of it.

One of my favorite characters was India, youngest member of the McCrays, who are the other family owners of Beldam. She was raised in New York City and gets fascinated with the peace, quiet, and weird happenings on the beach property. McDowell was a screenwriter for Beetlejuice, and India is very much an earlier model of Lydia—a precocious, urban kid who is into photography and out of her element.

It takes a while for this to get scary but when it did, it was quite satisfying. For me, because the fear of (view spoiler)[being buried alive really gets to me, the opening conversations about the family history of entombing family members alive plus all shifting sands at Beldam gave me a sense of dread throughout the entire story. (hide spoiler)]