OZARK BANSHEE is the story of “Pastor Mike,” a phony would-be exorcist who plans to make a killing from those he disdains as ignorant rubes in rural Missouri. Traveling with his girlfriend, Mike soon encounters Jeb and his family, latter-day pioneers who live off the land. Or are they ghosts from a bygone era? In any event, there’s a “haint” on Jeb’s old homestead, a familiar spirit or demon known as a banshee who holds the family in thrall. Jeb says he’s counting on Pastor Mike to free him and his brood from the banshee’s spell, but Mike seems more interested in selling out to the powers of darkness. A dramatic series of terrifying events convinces Mike to repent of his evil intentions and sinful deeds and to rescue Jeb and the others. But is Mike’s redemption complete enough and sincere enough to protect him during the final exorcism? Or will the forces of evil destroy him and those he loves before he can cast out the demon? When I was a little kid my parents took me to the movies to see a Disney picture, Darby O’Gill and the Little People. That motion picture bears the dubious distinction of being Sean Connery’s first singing screen appearance, in which he croons his best in a duet with Janet Munro, a sappy tune called Pretty Irish Girl. (His second and last singing appearance onscreen to my knowledge was in Dr. No, in which he voices part of Under the Mango Tree.) I remember having a crush on Janet Munro, as nine-year-old boys will, and it was with great sadness I learned that she had died decades ago at the tragically young age of thirty-eight. Although I didn’t know it at the time, later research has revealed to me that the movie was loosely based on a book of short stories entitled Darby O’Gill and the Good People penned by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh, née McGibney. The stories were written circa 1903 and initially serialized in McClure magazine two years before the author’s marriage to a Cook County, Illinois judge in the Hinky Dink Kenna and Bathhouse John Coughlin era. Today you can purchase the book for 99¢ from Amazon Kindle in a process more magical than even H.T. herself could have foreseen. Better yet, log onto Google Books and it won’t cost you a red cent to read. Don’t worry about chiseling the author out of royalties; the good woman went to her reward back in 1933 and besides, the book is in the public domain. For what it’s worth, I highly recommend it. I fell in love with the book as soon as I read the epigraph, an excerpt from a William Allingham poem called The Fairies, that draws us in like a magic spell: Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren’t go a-hunting For fear of little men. Wee folk, good folk Trooping altogether; Green jacket, red cap And white owl’s feather. They stole little Bridget For seven years’ long; When she came down again Her friends were all gone. I mention Darby O’Gill for two reasons. No, make that three. Number one, whereas today the movie may seem whimsical and rather sweet, even by Walt Disney standards, to a young child of the sensitive variety back in 1959 the spooky scenes, especially the ones with the bewitched horse, the Cóiste Bodhar (death coach) and the Banshee herself scared the hell out of me. Did the abject fear that seized me by the tender young throat that fateful evening in the State Theater in Mendota Illinois go deep underground in my psyche, only to emerge years later as the inspiration for my latest novel OZARK BANSHEE?