Book Review: Blood Cypress by Elizabeth Broadbent

Blood Cypress is a classy Southern gothic novella dealing in small town prejudice, familial complexity and the suffocating swampland that surrounds the town.

Blood Cypress is written by acclaimed author, Elizabeth Broadbent and will be published and available for consumption on April 3rd 2025 via Raw Dog Screaming Press.

Elizabeth Broadbent left the South Carolina swamps for the Commonwealth of Virginia, where she lives with her three sons and husband. She’s the author of Ink Vine (Undertaker Books), Ninety-Eight Sabers and Breaking Neverland, coming in 2026 with Sley House Publications and of course, Blood Cypress. Her speculative fiction has appeared with HyphenPunk, Tales to Terrify, If There’s Anyone Left, Peunumbric, and The Cafe Irreal, among other places. During her long career as a journalist, her nonfiction appeared in publications such as The Washington Post, Insider, and ADDitude Magazine.

Blood Cypress is also part of a series called The Selected Papers from the Consortium for the Study of Anomalous Phenomena, or CSAP, as that is a mouthful. This novella series is curated by editor/academic R.J. Joseph and contains books that give a full reading experience in a short amount of time. Blood Cypress will be the 7th book in that series. The 6 available so far are Bleak Houses by Kate Maruyama, 12 Hours by L. Marie Wood, Asylum by Sarah Hans, Hollow Tongue by Eden Royce and His Unburned Heart by David Sandner and Errant Roots by Sonora Taylor. Bottling His Ghosts by S.H. Cooper will also be released in 2025 and will become the 8th in the series.

Back to Blood Cypress though.

No one cares when Lila Carson’s ten-year-old brother Beau disappears. He can’t speak. He throws tantrums. He’s a useless Carson, one of those kids in a broken-shuttered house that lost its glory when his father died. When the sheriff and his good ol’ boy deputies show up to investigate, they eye up Lila and call her twin brother, Quentin, names. A closeted bisexual girl in the South, she’s terrified.

Lower Congaree recites it like an eleventh commandment: Don’t go in that swamp. But as the long night drags on, it’s clear Beau disappeared behind those ancient trees. The sheriff’s deputies won’t risk going back there

Lila might not have a choice

We approach the story of Blood Cypress from the perspective of Lila Carson, of the Carson family from Lower Congaree. A town that lives up to the stereotype of small town in both size, prejudices and mentality. Before that though, we aren’t there anymore and are actually in Princeton, with Lila at a bar who “hooks up” with McKenzie. McKenzie represents us, the reader, so really this is McKenzie’s retelling of her encounter with Lila Carson. Back at Lila’s place, they chat. McKenzie pushes a reserved Lila to spill details on her past, and she does, but with the caveat of “I’ll tell you, but you won’t believe me”.

Blood Cypress tells the story this way, with Lila recounting her past, then breaks in the story to come back to present time where McKenzie offers some insight, or disbelief. It’s an engaging way to deliver this story. Now before I summarise, this is a short story – no more than 100 pages and so I am going to be brief here. I really want to be careful and not give away any spoilers.

Back in Lower Congaree, or maybe the town is actually Congaree and we are in just in the lower half of it? Let me try to paint a picture of the town and I think you will recognise it. Southern, swampland, suffocating air with the stench of old trees and rot. trust me, Elizabeth Broadbent does a way better job that that but hopefully you get the idea of our surroundings. The Carson family, that Lila is a child of, were a wealthy family, with an estate cut off from the rest of the town and they aren’t particularly liked, especially since their father died, because they are seen as oddities.

The remaining members of the Carson family are the mother, a lady so on edge by the town that she lives in that her whole life is really a mask. She wears what she thinks people expect her to wear, says the right things, and avoids any sort of drama or issue that could shine a light upon her family. Traits that appear to have been passed on to Lila’s twin, Quentin who appears to be one of the more rounded family members but we learn more about him and the lengths he has gone to in order to protect his warped sense of normality and masculinity.

We have the cold hearted older sibling Davis who cares more about his family name and finances than anyone in his family and of course Lila, who is homosexual and then we have Beau, who is described as “having come out wrong” but to us normal people, appears to have some form of autism that has never been diagnosed properly, because that would create a scene.

So for a mother, who tries her hardest to fit in, and remain lowkey, she would see her children as challenging which has also clearly affected the relationships between those children and their remaining parent.

It is a short story, but I must state that it is amazing how well fattened out each of these characters storylines are, as well as the connections between each family member to each other, their home and the town. So, while errands are being run, Beau, who is non verbal, disappears. Davis was meant to be watching him, but he was busy so didn’t bother. After a period of searching his usual quiet places, the family realise he is truly missing. Lila starts to think he might have gone into the swampy woodland but can’t bear thinking about it.

Through the cleverly descriptive language used, the feeling we readers and McKenzie are given from this surrounding swampland is that you do not go in there. People used to, and they never return. Whether that is because of wild animals, or ancient monsters, we don’t know. We only know that everyone, including the police, who are called to look for Beau, are terrified of it.

So, the police come and if you weren’t already sure of the attitudes of the area of Congaree, they will help you. The families reluctance to call them is a good hint but when the sheriff and his deputies arrive, they are next to useless. Worse than that, they are vile. They refuse to go into the swampland until daylight, knowing that for a child with Beau’s condition, that could be a fatal decision. In between bouts of aggression and bullying towards Quentin and David and the constant sexual harassment of young Lila, they demand coffee be provided by the women of the house, because that’s their place.

Yep, now you get it. This place sucks. And to make it very clear, when we read back and forth from “today” with McKenzie, to the past in Lila’s story, Elizabeth Broadbent cleverly dates each chapter so you and I fully understand that this is not 100 or 50 years ago. This is now.

With a police force that are successfully emptying the house of hope and coffee, but add nothing, Lila makes a choice. She goes in to the swampland alone, in the dark, desperate to find and save her little brother. Her time inside that swampland is the basis of her starting “you won’t believe me” statement and we, and McKenzie, will have to make our own minds up on that. Is Lila being truthful, or is it just her truth. Was she just disorientated, or is she a little mad. I mean, with that upbringing, who wouldn’t be, right? But what you do or don’t believe isn’t for me to state. You have to read Blood Cypress, and make you own mind up.

And you should read this because it is a very full story in such a short amount of pages. A maddeningly uncomfortable story from a bigotry and attitude perspective, to the genuinely suffocating atmosphere created by this intelligent author. It is scary, in many ways. From the main line of a young kid, lost in forest and swampland in the dark, to the family ties and secrets. Perhaps the scariest part of this story is the town and it’s residents though – it’s all too real and I’m glad the author continues to shine a bright light on these topics.

As a story alone, it is exciting, atmospheric and extremely engaging and more than deserving of your time.

Preorder Blood Cypress from Amazon, here.

Elizabeth Broadbent Links

Bluesky – Substack – Facebook – TikTok – Instagram – Threads – Amazon – Goodreads