Follow Me To Ground Is An Innovative and Haunting Experience

This quarantine has left me with pretty much no choice but to read the books I’d been putting off and saving for a rainy day, in case of an emergency. For an avid reader like myself, buying books is simply out of the question. I’d blow way too much money way too quickly, and I basically have almost any book I want at my fingertips at my local library—which, I might add, is something my tax dollars help fund anyway. During this time at home, the novels have been far and few between when it comes to impressing and engrossing me, but Follow Me to Ground has not been one of those books. In fact, it’s been one of the few books that’s stood out to me and stayed with me throughout this near two-month long isolation.

I picked this book up a few days before my local library closed, and boy, am I so glad I did. Follow Me to Ground by Sue Rainsford is a deeply dark, disturbing, and enchanting debut. An absolute stunner, IMO. This short novel sucked me in and lingered in my mind long after I finished its final pages.

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‘Follow me to ground’ synopsis

A haunted, surreal debut novel about an otherworldly young woman, her father, and her lover that culminates in a shocking moment of betrayal—one that upends our understanding of power, predation, and agency.

Ada and her father, touched by the power to heal illness, live on the edge of a village where they help sick locals—or “Cures”—by cracking open their damaged bodies or temporarily burying them in the reviving, dangerous Ground nearby. Ada, a being both more and less than human, is mostly uninterested in Cures, until she meets a man named Samson. When they strike up an affair, to the displeasure of her father and Samson’s widowed, pregnant sister, Ada is torn between her old way of life and new possibilities with her lover—and eventually comes to a decision that will forever change Samson, the town, and the Ground itself.

Follow Me to Ground is fascinating and frightening, urgent and propulsive. In Ada, award-winning author Sue Rainsford has created an utterly bewitching heroine, one who challenges conventional ideas of womanhood and the secrets of the body. Slim but authoritative, Follow Me to Ground lingers long after its final page, pulling the reader into a dream between fairytale and nightmare, desire, and delusion, folktale and warning.

This novel has elements of fantasy, magical realism, horror; suspense and unsettling dread that bubbles and builds under the surface with each passing word. I swear I could actually feel the tension growing with each sentence. Told through Ada’s POV and added testimonials from the villagers about Ada, her father, and their work to offset the chapters, Rainsford has masterfully woven a lyrical, flowery, dark, and propulsive one-of-a-kind story about otherworldly creatures, nature, the powers to heal, love, and most of all, the female body. The writing is so beautiful that it almost hides the disturbing truth at the heart of this story.

It’s hard to describe exactly what this book is, as it is told and written in such a unique way. The best way I can describe it is mesmerizing. I was incapable of putting this book down. Rainsford makes you question the urges of the human body, and what we will do for them.

The Ground is reviving and unforgiving, and Cures—AKA humans—are not supposed to be put in the Ground for very long, for the dangers and risk are far too high. Only the sickest of Cures are put into the Ground when Ada and her father aren’t able to heal them on their own. We learn that Ada was born from the Ground, her father was the one who helped make her, and at nighttime Ada’s father turns into some sort of carnivorous animal and goes hunting for food through the woods on all fours, naked. Two otherworldly creatures with otherworldly powers and the ability to heal the most incurable of diseases, the villagers can’t help but go to the two of them when they’re sick.

But here’s the kicker of this whole thing: though Ada’s father is powerful and he’s the one who dreamt her up and created her from the Ground, she is more powerful than him, and she knows it. (Another sly nod to the female body, how powerful it is, and what women are capable of.)

Though Ada is an otherworldly creature, she still has natural, human-like urges. When Samson comes in one day for a cure, her desire is sudden and all-consuming. Her and Samson strike up a weird relationship, and when they go to sleep together, they realize that they can’t because she doesn’t have the right body parts for it. So, Ada being the powerful creature she is, creates a spot just for Samson to fit inside of her.

“Whenever he was inside me I turned into a fist, grasping and releasing, a fist learning the shape of the thing it’s holding.“

Despite Ada’s attraction, we learn from Samson’s widowed and pregnant sister, her father’s warnings, and the testimonials from the other villagers that something with Samson is very, very wrong. But Ada, like everyone else who’s ever been in love with the wrong person, won’t be deterred. This is where the story builds and explodes, leaving Ada and the Ground itself changed forever.

My favorite theme of this whole book was the way it described the female body and the powers it holds. Sort of like a coming-of-age story, Ada tries to navigate through the sudden changes, shifts, and unbidden desires that come with growing up. Despite the fact that Ada is not human, Rainsford has made her relatable, raw, and real.

“No matter if he’s strange. No matter if he’s been birthed with a flicker he hadn’t before. No matter if he’s cruel or governed by a hungry fever. No matter, because I’ll no longer be sat here with my heart unseeded and my insides crackling dry. So long, too long, in the desert.“

I won’t get into much more, because I don’t want to spoil it, and it’s best to go in blind. I think men and women alike can appreciate this story, and the 196 pages fly by and read like a dream. I loved the way Rainsford used the imagery of nature to symbolize healing in this story, yet she was still able to add a horrific element by including the terror of being buried alive by putting Cures in the dirt to revitalize their bodies. There are so many subtleties and metaphors used throughout that only made this strange book even more magical.

Follow Me to Ground is an innovative and haunting experience. Rainsford has written a hypnotic story about our primal desires and healing. As if that gorgeous cover wasn’t enough to catch your eye, believe me when I tell you that this novel will pull you in and get under your skin in the best way possible. I will forever read anything Sue Rainsford ever writes.