Those Who Hunger: An Amish Vampire Thriller by Owen Banner Spoilers

TW: Attempted rape, murder, child abuse, animal cruelty, and underaged drinking.

 

SYNOPSIS:

"In rural Pennsylvania, a teenage boy is mauled to death. 
Hadassah Zook knows what happened, but she isn’t telling. There’s a dreadful secret buried between the furrows of her upright, simple Amish valley.

Another murder lights a fire of suspicion and prejudice in the community. It threatens to destroy everything. The killings draw in two FBI detectives: Jacobo Barrabas and Keith Linguard. But they aren’t the only ones on the hunt in Hager's Valley.

Those Who Hunger is a suspenseful, paranormal family saga and coming-of-age tale. It explores the consequences of secrecy, suspicion, and loss on a family in the midst of a young girl’s passage into womanhood."

*There are multiple subplots so I tried to make it as concise and understandable as possible. It's a long one.*

SPOILERS:

• At an auction in Hager’s Valley (Pennsylvania) a horse becomes wild and injures teenager Roy and is saved by his friend, Steve. Nehemiah, an Amish man, buys the wild horse to prevent it from being slaughtered.

• After being checked out by a doctor for his cracked ribs Roy and Steve meet up with their friend, Bobby, and walk around to the market where they meet Hadassah (Haddie) and think she is cute.

• Steve has been getting agitated throughout the whole night and starts bashing the Amish life and being crude about Amish girls. So after dropping off Bobby and Roy, Steve decides to get drunk and follow Haddie. He tries to rape her when she returns from the pharmacy to retrieve medicine for her sick four year old sister, Mary. He threatens her with a broken beer bottle and cuts her tongue when the blood seems to activate her hunger and she kills him.

• She is horrified about what she has done and hides it from her family. Mary turns out to be a vampire as well and kills a cow. Haddie’s 13 year old brother, Peter, is horrified as is Nehemiah, their father, but Haddie calms and comforts Mary.

• Nehemiah and his wife Esther explain to Haddie and Peter about Cain’s curse in their blood and how killing his brother Abel cursed him to be a vampire from his blood lust. Esther is a “vampire” and so is their eldest brother who left the Amish community, Nathaniel. They explain that the hunger/curse happens by the time they are 16, but have never seen it happen to a child so young as Mary. They are telling Haddie and Peter now because they witnessed Mary’s hunger; the community usually tells children about the curse after they return from Rumspringa and are baptized into the Amish church.

• Haddie still doesn’t tell them she is marked (those who are cursed have a crescent moon mark somewhere on their body). And Peter becomes wary of Esther and Mary, and is not handling the information well.

• Jacobo and Keith are detectives and investigate the murder of a girl at a motel. She was a teenager and prostitute, and was mutilated. Jacobo turns on the TV in the room to a church channel, suspecting the killer watched it. Then he reaches into her body and finds a cross necklace shoved into the girl’s chest cavity.

• Steve’s murder has been the talk of the small town and Roy and Steve’s younger sister, Melanie, decide to start ditching school to get away from the gossip and theories.

• At an Amish gathering, those who know of or are inflicted with the curse stay in the house while the children play outside. They talk about Steve’s death and the possibility of it being by one of them or someone from another community passing by. Haddie, looking in from outside, notices that the boy she likes, Noah, is also in the meeting and discovers that he is a vampire.

• Jacobo and Keith investigate Steve’s death and suspect that it’s connected to other murders by being a copycat. The other murders found the women had their blood drained and called the murderer a vampire. They go to the mortician, Sandra, to view the body.

• Sandra, who has a crescent moon tattoo on her wrist, meets Jacobo alone and tells him that they found a woman’s hair on Steve and suspects it’s one of the marked since there are a lot around the town.

• A tucker is attacked by someone in an Amish buggy near Hager’s Valley in the middle of the night and if found split in two where the lower half is kneeling on the ground facing the truck and on the truck’s hood is the upper half facing the lower half with the hands clasped together in prayer.

• Nehemiah and Esther want to confirm whether or not it is Nathaniel committing these murders and has Haddie participate in Rumspringa with her friends (Abby, Hannah, Noah, and Tondy) to go and find him in Chicago using the address they received from him in a mail. Peter is scared that she won’t come back, that Nathaniel might kill her, and has a feeling that she will never return.

• On the way to Chicago, Haddie starts having jealous, wicked thoughts about her friends Abby and Hannah when she thinks Noah will choose one of them over her.

• Back in Hager’s Valley, Garvin Muller is visited by Jake to ask about the murdered trucker and says that the Amish are safe with him. After Jake leaves, Garvin goes into the forest near his house to burn the axed remains of his buggy where the interior was covered in blood and viscera. The flames call him in but he stands still and watches the flames.

• After exploring Chicago for a day, Haddie and the gang find Nathaniel’s apartment but he isn’t in. The neighbor across the hall, Yves, takes them out to explore some more. When they return to the apartment, Nathaniel is back and opens the door to them.

• Peter and his friend Melvin go fishing to clear their heads and Peter has a violent thought about hurting someone. He takes it out on the fish he catches.

• Nathaniel takes them all to a baseball game. He tells her that she misses home everyday but would never go back since he feels freedom from judgement of his curse in the city than in the community.

• He angers her by saying he forgets about her and the family sometimes with music or video games. She walks off and runs into Roy who is a bit drunk (fake ID). And Roy offers for all of them to hang out while in the city.

• Roy feels stupid for being drunk in front of her and swears to stop drinking and clean himself up. After the baseball game, Roy decides to walk around the city alone and witnesses a car accident. As he’s helping one of the drivers, he sees Haddie open the car with kids, and then her being pulled away by Noah.

• Noah takes Haddie back to Nathaniel’s where he and Yves help her with her hunger.

• Jacobo visits the Zook family, where Mary almost names everyone in the family when Esther interrupts. She points him to where Peter and Nehemiah are and he asks Nehemiah about the mare, Steve, the trucker, and Esther and Mary. Nehemiah tells him he doesn’t know anything.

• That night Esther and Nehemiah make love and she tells him how some of the women have been acting differently and distant towards her. And a family is planning on moving away because of the accidents. He tells her not to stress about it.

• Katie Fisher, an Amish wife and mother, goes out to collect the forgotten laundry an unfamiliar voice sings to her from behind. She is killed and crucified naked.

• Esther says it’s a mockery of her purity and innocence. When Esther goes to the Fisher house and walks in on the men talking about stocking up on ammunition they stop talking and look at her suspiciously. When she joins the women some of the women act suspicious towards her but some act kindly but don’t want her near their children when she offers to take care of them. 

• Haddie wakes up in Yves room and he tells her that he is like her and has lived a long time. He explains that Nathaniel is like a drug dealer but with blood, and sometimes with drugs mixed in, which is why he is studying medicine and working in a hospital where he gets the blood he sells.

• Keith and Jacobo go to interview the dead hooker’s boyfriend who is the pimp. The pimp runs and they split up. Keith is having a shootout with gang members when he finds the pimp impaled on a metal fence post as if he tried to jump off the bridge. Jake saves Keither from getting run over and they shoot the gang members. Keith sees blood on Jake’s collar and asks if he got hurt, Jake says “We’ll see.”

• Peter and Mervin walk around the forest with a rifle Mervin found in the pile of guns and ammo his dad recently bought. Peter has a foreboding feeling that he will never experience Rumspringa and that he will live and die in this community but not necessarily grow up in it. They find a mother coyote and her pups eating a deer and rabbit. Peter is a bit envious of the pups to sleep without fear. He shoots the mom and one of the pups; when he plans on shooting another pup Mervin stops him and begs him to finish off the mom (to show mercy), Peter walks away comparing Mervin’s sobs and coyote mother’s groans with their congregation when they gather in worship.

• Roy and his friends (Bobby, Mel, and Zy) visit Haddie and the gang who agree to go clubbing with them at another time. They all, with Yves, go to the beach, where Roy and Haddie talk and get to know one another. As Haddie sees her Amish friends changing slowly and she thinks the longer they stay in the city everything will change. She wonders if she’ll go back home.

• Peter has been skipping supper and not looking well so Nehemiah has a talk with him. He tries to ease Peter’s mind and nerves about his mother being a vampire. Afterwards in the middle of the night, Nehemiah wakes up from a nightmare with Jacobo in it. He goes to the window to find a masked figure who throws an alcohol bottle with a rag in it on fire. Nehemiah gets caught in the flames and the man throws another near Esther. The room is bathed in flames.

• Peter wakes and finds his father and mother in flames. He runs to get a pitcher of water and throws it at Nehemiah which distinguishes the fire on him but spreads the fire in the room. Esther tells him to get baking soda, he is about to get it when he stops and sits down. Nehemiah calls him and he returns empty handed and can’t answer about the baking soda. Esther took off her clothes and is no longer on fire but is trying to beat the fire down. Nehemiah hands Mary, who is wrapped in a blanket and burned on the side, to Peter and goes to get the baking soda. Peter goes outside and sets Mary down, scared of her, and when Obi and Rachel try to get near her he pushes them away telling them she isn’t safe to be around. Esther, now wrapped in a sheet, and Nehemiah come out to comfort the younger siblings, leaving Peter standing by himself, and staring at him, knowing what he did. Peter feels shame for not doing anything and waiting for Esther and Mary to burn, as he thinks he hears a coyote’s moan.

• Jacobo briefly states that his family has the mark (and that he is one of the cursed), and how his father spoke about a secret book that held the secret to the curse, but was driven out of the Amish community. They stayed in a monastery where his father died, but before that he gave a torn page—a scroll—to Jake that he buried in the wall of his father’s room in the monastery. His mission in life is to protect people from his kind, but only the predators. He wonders about making a life as an Amish, but remembers all the villages and communities that coexisted with those with the mark and how one selfish craving could cause tragedy; communities tore themselves apart with the distrust of one another and Jake can see that happening now in Nehemiah’s community. Still, no one is telling him anything and he is getting impatient.

• Haddie and co are dressed in modern clothes provided by Mel and Zy as they head to the club Nathaniel knows the owner of. Nathaniel leaves them to take care of business. Haddie is uncomfortable with the drinking and decides he wants to dance, Roy goes with her (to Mel’s displeasure) and she loses herself to the music. Her craving starts to develop and she causes mayhem as she tries to escape. Roy follows her out to find her a mess and tries to comfort her. Bobby comes out saying that Mel is gone.

• Mel left with strangers (the Oompa Loompas) and Haddie makes Roy call Nathaniel after putting the pieces of the strangers being vampires. Nathaniel and Yves arrive and they take Noah and Haddie to find Mel and for the experience. They explain that the Oompa Loompas are members of Willy’s gang, who also does blood and slave business, but by trafficking people. Nathaniel gets mad at Haddie for losing control and being naive about everything. Yves tells her that when she drinks from people, she essentially consumes that person’s nature into her, like their vices, urges, and obsessions. They eventually find the storage unit Willy and his gang keep stolen humans. Haddie and co kill the gang at the unit but don’t find Mel. They find out Willy has her and they go to his club where they all start fighting each other. Haddie and co kill their way out and escape in the sewer with an unconscious Mel.

• Sandy and Jacobo visit a physician, Willis, that helps vampires and he tells Jacobo that he hasn’t helped anyone suspicious, but that the Zooks have a young vampire. Jacobo suspects Esther, and Willis tells him there are six children. He also promises to send him a registry of patients and medical reports.

• Sandy and Jacobo go bowling and get to know one another. Jacobo confesses that he killed the pimp while he was separated from Keith and fed off him. Sandy takes him to her house to have sex.

• Esther attends a community meeting on behalf of Nehemiah since he is bed ridden. There is a divide on whether the families with the curse should more or not. Esther wants justice and gets mad. A fight breaks out and Esther leaves after fighting a few men and believing she made it worse for her kind/outcome. The Zooks are staying with the other Fishers, Noah’s parents. She tends to Nehemiah and when the Fishers return they look saddened and will tell them the conclusion of the meeting later. 

• Peter takes the rifle stored in Noah’s closet to shoot the mare, thinking she is bad luck. He misses her head but angers her and when she charges him he shoots her neck and her hind legs kick out and connect to his head.

• Jacobo remembers his first love and their daughter, how he built himself a home, as he looks through the patient records Dr. Willis sent him about all the Amish vampires. He remains suspicious of the Zooks, and finds that an Elias Muller went in for tri-monthly check ups for a sex drive inhibitor but then disappeared in the 70s, the same time he was removed from the church registry. Sandy persuades him to have sex with her again and they she has not let him leave the house in three days.

• Roy is wallowing from his trip being over so soon and Haddie being distant. She announces that she has to leave early because her father is hurt. Tondy and Hannah decide to go back with her because the city life isn’t for them, Noah decides to stay and explore some more and Abby agrees. Hannah changes her mind, with the idea of her playing chaperone, to Abby’s slight displeasure. Roy tries to persuade Abby not to stay for Noah, but she refuses, saying she is done waiting for chances and will start making them. They all go and play baseball on the Wrigley Field, where Roy eavesdrops on Nate and Haddie arguing about Noah staying and Nate studying science to cure what they have. Afterwards he goes to talk to her and she kisses him and tells him to let her go, to which he says he can’t.

• Since the community meeting, the relationship with the Fishers have soured. Ezekiel and Nehemiah go to the Zook’s barn where Nehemiah cries with his animals because he feels useless and a failure to protect and provide for his family. Zeke and Nehemiah work together to preserve the good wood still left of the house, and Nehemiah finds an unconscious Peter in the burned master’s bedroom.

• Esther is depressed and angry about everything that has happened and thinks about death, from suicide to seeing her family dead while she stays alive. She unconsciously walks to the house of the woman that slapped her at the meeting to make amends for her family. She sees a car coming and can’t stop herself from walking in front of the car, which swerves out of the way. It’s Jacobo and he tells her to get in the car. He tries to get her to talk about Nathaniel, but she refuses to sacrifice her son in the name of justice.

• Keith and Jacobo find a lead to a violent motorcycle gang called the Priests. The motel victim, Annalise, was the girlfriend of one but ran away. Jacobo goes to talk to them and reveals that she slept with another of the gang members, Dimas, so Jacobo believes that she was killed out of revenge by the boyfriend or to keep her quiet by the other man, and later the killer kept killing (the trucker and Steve) without the leader, Odin (aka Dragan Muller) knowing. Jacobo thinks Odin is familiar. Keith and Jacobo decide to take them down before they leave so they call Roy’s dad, the sheriff, and his team. They took some down but the rest and the leader got away. Both the boyfriend and Dimas are killed; one, who is believed to be Dimas, was gutted and hung like a pig, with crosses jammed into his eyes, far behind the cabin and they don’t think the leader did it because he would have made an example of him, but they can’t ask the boyfriend since Keith and another sheriff killed him.

• Haddie returns and doesn’t think her and Roy should hang out. Roy finds that Mel is still doing drugs and not going into work. Peter wakes up after a week-long coma and Haddie tells him that he’ll be leaving for Ohio with their uncle. 

• After Peter leaves, Esther and Haddie bond and Haddie tells her mom that she and Noah probably won’t end up together since Abby is “casting all her hooks” to catch him and she didn’t cast one for him. Jacobo visits the Zooks again and questions Haddie. Before he is forcefully asked to leave by Esther, he tells her that a girl’s hair was found on Steve and Esther is fearful. 

• As six of 29 families help to rebuild the Zook’s house, Nehemiah bottles up his blame on Esther but lashes out at her, so she walks away. Nathaniel returns to help to the absolute joy of Nehemiah, who has missed his eldest son so much, but because he is shunned from the community many of the families leave and don’t return to help. Nathaniel tells Haddie that he will leave once the house is built and then he will join Yves in California where he is now with the other three Amish kids. He’ll set up a trail in Chicago for the gang members to make sure he can’t be tracked.

• Roy and Bobby arrive to help and people are suspicious of Haddie and Roy. Roy wants to know why she didn’t talk to him and she tells him that he doesn’t understand Amish customs and refuses to talk to him further, which angers him.

• Jacobo chases down a lone biker and when the biker refuses to answer his question, Jacobo feeds off of him. Esther witnesses this and Jacobo chases after her, noticing that there is someone else’s blood on her face. They both are enjoying the chase, but  he catches her and they both remove their clothes to go in the river, where they kiss. When Jacobo tries to lift her she stops him, looking guilty, and leaves. This was presumably the same time Esther and Nehemiah had an argument and she left (see previous bullet points).

• At the dinner table with Nathaniel (the Fisher’s are gone), they are confronted by many people from the community demanding they give them Nathaniel because he is accused of killing Tondy (and possibly the other victims). Esther confesses that she killed him, proving she returned to the Fisher’s very late that night and that her clothes are unwashed with more proof. They take her way for trial in two days out of respect for Nehemiah.

• Nehemiah is heartbroken and angry at Esther’s selfishness to feed. He continues to build his house throughout the night and only the Schwartz family return to help him along with Nathaniel, Bobby, and Roy. Nehemiah starts noticing he is being shunned throughout his community. He makes an unconscious decision to go to the place Tondy was murdered, where he finds tracks and follows them.

• Esther is locked away in the barn like an animal. Haddie visits her and confesses that she is one of the cursed and that she killed Steve. Esther tells her not to confess until after her “trial.”

• Roy tries to get Mel to stop self-destructing and he finds out that she has been taking photos of Haddie at night. He plans on catching her in the act and trying to get her to talk to him again. Four motorcycles pass where he is hiding, just after Mel arrives and goes to her hiding spot.

• There is no trial and Esther is sentenced to be stoned to death. She doesn’t see Nehemiah and resents his cowardice. As she is being assaulted by stones and Nehemiah’s old friend takes mercy to end her life faster by crushing her head with a boulder, Nathaniel arrives to save her but is chained. Esther tries to save him by saying she killed all the people and not him. The Bishop calls her a whore and tries to lift the boulder to kill her. Then Nehemiah arrives in his buggy, nearly running people over, and brings out the deer that Esther killed and that the blood on her dress and the deer’s blood matched. He then confesses that he told Jacobo everything and that a motorcycle gang whose leader is Garvin’s uncle, Elias (aka Odin), is killing people. He then tells everyone that Bishop and his wife have been aborting their pregnancies, which Bishop confesses that he will not have an “abomination” as a child.

• Bishop and his wife leave, some follow in as if “sleepwalking,” some sob for forgiveness, and the rest stare into the lamp light.

• During this time, Haddie is at their newly built home and goes to fetch more blood for Mary when she finds four bikers in the house. Odin has Obi on his lap and Rachel nowhere to be found. Mary comes out of her hiding spot and attacks one of the bikers allowing Haddie to get Obi away from Odin and let him escape. Mary is beat up by Odin, another feeds off of the conrade that was bitten by Mary while another biker tries to rape Haddie (he doesn't get that far, thank god).

• After helping Nehemiah he passes the back of the Zook house and finds motorcycles hidden in the field. He gets into the house where he finds Rachel hiding in a room. He tries to save Haddie and gets in a fight with Odin and another vampire biker.

• Roy runs in with a shovel and shoves it in the rapist biker’s back, but is launched away. Haddie impales the biker with the shovel and tries to help Jacobo, who defeats one of the bikers. However, Jacobo has weakened and Odin bites Haddie’s stomach to open her up. Roy tries to save her but Odin breaks his knee. Odin threatens to keep Mary and Haddie attacks him and stabs him in the eye and kills him.

• Roy and Mel vaguely talk about what happened, confirming that what Haddie is (and the bikers) was not an illusion. They agree to not tell anyone and that Roy was invited by Haddie to talk about it. Mel, who has stopped self-destructing, is sad that he still likes Haddie.

• Roy goes to the Zook’s and he tells Haddie he forgives her for lying to him and that he still wants to know her, to be with her. They both agree to give it a try (with Nehemiah’s agreement).

• A week later, Nehemiah and Nathaniel are working the field when his oldest friend comes to help (he isn’t “bold enough to ask for forgiveness”), Nehemiah allows him, granting him one step towards forgiveness. He tells Nehemiah that his son and Katie Fisher’s son were the two that burned his house that night and that they will be by to apologize later in the week.

• When he leaves, Jacobo and Sandy arrive to check up on Nehemiah and he thanks them both for their help. The murders will be tied to the one biker Keith caught during the shootout (the motel victim’s ex). The bikers that were killed in the Zook’s house were taken care of by the community. Jacobo says he will stay a bit in town (possibly for Sandy), and Nehemiah figures that once Jacobo deals with redemption or the goal he has set for himself he will return to settle into a simpler life.

• Esther confesses to Nehemiah that she kissed Jacobo and he saw her naked the night she killed the dear. Nehemiah is internally upset about it but understands that Jacobo is a worthier man than himself, who has burned scars throughout his body and is weaker than his wife. Esther tells him that she wants only him and they make love without her restraints.

• Nehemiah begins the trip to get Peter back, and tries to convince Nathaniel to stay, which is a failed attempt. They see the mare that Peter shot galloping in the wild (who will sometimes visit them in their field in the future). Nehemiah confesses his love for the simple life and all the joy and good it brings. 

RATING:

Mel's rating:

3.75 stars

I fairy enjoyed this book! I love multiple POV/subplot books, and especially with such a unique twist to the vampire myth. Learning a bit about Amish life was interesting and gave every mundane experience some charm, especially when some of the kids went to Chicago for Rumspringa. There was also the mystery of who was killing everyone and all that foreshadowing, ominous feeling around the Zooks. I also enjoyed the romance and coming of age themes with Haddie, Noah, Roy, and everyone. I did get bored with Jacobo and Keith's plots, ironically.

However, the last few chapters or so were unorganized and didn't answer a few question, specifically—and this one I'm most upset about—is what about Garvin Muller burning his bloody buggy?! Did Odin steal it? Why would he just steal his nephew's buggy to kill the trucker? Was Garvin in on it but didn't get caught? Also, the whole community didn't freaking grovel at the Zook's feet which was really unsatisfying! The Bishop and his wife still walk around high and mighty. 

Also, I loved both Noah and Roy for Haddie, but I was unsatisfied as to when and why she stopped pursuing Noah. Like he saved her multiple times while they tried to save Mel and all of a sudden they barely talked afterwards and when they did it was in Roy's POV so we don't know what else they talked about other than him not returning. I know she saw a different/freer side of Noah and she was kind of judgy/disappointed in him but you can hardly blame him. I just wish there was more explanations from her about Noah. Still love the pining and puppy love Roy had for her though.