Following the devastation of Hurricane Maria in 2017, Puerto Rico was in ruins: 95% of the island was without power, half the population didn’t have tap water, and there was at least $90 billion in damage.
That catastrophic moment of grief and wreckage is the setting of Gabino Iglesias’ latest, House of Bone and Rain, the follow-up to 2022’s The Devil Takes You Home. The latter earned the Austin-based author a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel—the only Latino writer to achieve the horror genre’s highest honor—as well as a movie deal with Sony.
For House of Bone’s protagonist, Gabe, and his childhood friends, death is omnipresent in the wake of the storm. But after one of their mothers is gunned down at a club, they begin to look for answers in an even more dangerous world of drug kingpins, gang brutality, ghosts, and Lovecraftian monsters. Inspired by a tragedy that happened in the author’s own life prior to his move to Texas in 2008, the gothic coming-of-age tale induces emotional gravity as the characters navigate the loss of home and youth.
“The inciting incident with the mother getting shot, that actually happened to me and my friends,” Iglesias says. “I think I started formulating that story in my head in the summer of 1999—because when I actually sat down to write it, it was all there 20 years later.”
House of Bone and Rain is a propulsive and chilling read. But more so than any henchman practicing in the occult—a signature of Iglesias’ barrio noir style—the true horror of the novel lies in the shadow of colonialism. Because the lawless streets, fueled by government indifference, are more daunting than any sea creature could ever be in Gabe’s odyssey of redemption.
