Jenny Kiefer’s debut, This Wretched Valley (2024) is inspired by the Dyatlov Pass Incident but moves the underlying event away from the snowy Urals to the Kentucky woodlands. Starting in October 2019, the four main characters are dead or missing, their bodies having been found in unsual and somewhat impossible conditions. How they got in this state is the thrust of the book, and no sooner has the initial mystery been telegraphed, Kiefer whisks us back seven months to unravel the entertaining mystery.
It may be simple enough to explain it away as assholes so self-interested that they miss the warning signs. When sitting in a local cafe the waitress warning them off stands in for the classic gas station hick. Their agitated dog responding to the unseen. The unusual road that seems to bring them back to the cafe despite driving in the opposite direction. But cautionary tales bring something of the inevitable, and the book becomes a long piece of dramatic irony as we follow people going to their death. Their general unpleasantness softens any concerns, but their general shallowness means there’s not much to them to put the reader through the emotional wringer.
The cast are something of a Kentuckian Famous Five, bound together on an expedition into the woods to review a rockface spotted from the air. The aptly named Clay and Sylvia, respectively geology and botany students, seek fame in their separate ways; he seeking his fortune in discovering new climbs and she wanting co-authorship on his publications. In order to study the rock, they recruit Dylan, a rock climber with a sizeable socal media following and newly signed by a sports brand, who aspires to reach the heights of her sport. Dylan’s parter, Luke, and his dog, Slade, are along for the ride.
The woods are always a great location for horror. They are naturally dark, the ground is full of past seasons’ rot, and there’s always something stirring in the undergrowth. It certainly feels that Kiefer knows this territory, finding depth in its bouquet of poisonous flora and echoes of local history that leach into the current day. There’s a hint of something Borgesian at play in these woods (“she saw only trunks upon trunks in the distance, duplicating like a mirror reflecting another mirror”) and while there’s certainly mysteries of perception in the tree-like maze, it was perhaps wishful thinking on my part that they would further than the eventual reveal.
Being trapped in a forest means that there’s little scenery to work with, and it’s a positive that the pacing of the story, especially in the first half, never feels forced or strained. Things feel logical, even when there’s hints of the unusual, and there’s enough variety in events to keep it interesting as GPS fails and phone signals disappear and isolate them further. Certainly the occasional moments of rock climbing elevate the writing as there’s clearly a keen knowledge behind the writing, channelling experience into tense drama.
Having secured my attention for the first two hundred pages, the final third descends into unappetising action as Kiefer races to her characters’ untimely ends. The inscrutable nature of the ancient land is paired with something more supernatural and modern, which feels lazy and unsatisfying, if well-plotted. Paired with the historical interludes it all becomes too explanatory, although the the wider cosmic mystery is ultimately a treat.
The many characters that pass through this woodland are pursuing their own self-interests, in spite of that waitress’s early warning. But This Wretched Valley seems also to alert us to the problems of being over reliant on technology. It’s a glitch in a scanner that leads to Clay forming the expedition and it’s the failure of GPS and mobile phones that strand them. But perhaps aiming to please on social media, as per Dylan’s satiating of her Instagram audience, is also cautionary.