Every woman who has lived on this farm has died. Emily just moved in.
When Emily Hauk’s mother dies, it’s time for her and her husband, Josh, to finally leave San Francisco. A farm in rural Nebraska is everything they want for a fresh start: clear skies, low costs, and distance from the grief back home.
They should have asked why the farm was for sale.
Three years ago a teenage girl went missing from the farm. Soon afterward the girl’s mother mysteriously died. The deeper Emily digs the more stories she uncovers of women connected to her new home who’ve met their own dark ends.
With each passing day Emily’s sanctuary slips further away. The barn seems to move throughout her property as though chasing her. Her mother’s favorite music drifts across the cornfield. She swears she saw blood in one of the farmhand’s trucks. And the screams that wake her are not fox howls, no matter how many times her husband says otherwise. If she wants to claim this place as her own she’ll have to find out the truth before whatever watches from the cornfield takes her, too.
1. The reason you can feel “seasick” in the plains is the same reason it might feel like a barn or silo is chasing you.
The story seed for The Farmhouse came during a discussion about Baba Yaga folklore with a group of writers at The Storied Imaginarium. This witch’s house was built on chicken legs to move where she needed, the people who would come to ask for help, and those who would actually be granted it. It was a great conversation, but I kept thinking back to when I lived in the Midwest.
Landmarks like silos or barns were harder to track without any reference point on the horizon. It was just a sea of green or gold and this building jutting up from it. Almost as if it were on legs.
And then all I wanted to do was write a story where the barn was chasing my main character. Because that’s how it feels driving along a two-lane road for miles.
Digging into it, the phenomenon is the same reason some people may experience “seasickness” while driving along I-80 cutting their way across the middle of the US. Much like being in the ocean, the horizon is endless without a mountain or collection of buildings to center you. And so you drift. Even in the corn.
2. I needed readers to feel seen
I set out to write The Farmhouse as an “onion book.” I want readers to have the choice to escape with Emily as she solves the mystery around the missing girls. But if they have the appetite for something more, I hope they’ll dive into the way we process grief, the fear of not trusting their own mind or feelings, and the complicated dynamics within her marriage. Readers who want the thrilling mystery, horror atmosphere, and the depth can peel as deep into the book as they want. All flavors of readership are welcome.
But while I’d always intended the plot to include gaslighting, in writing I was forced to face the systemic way many of us self-gaslight. The “I’m overreacting” or the need to justify feelings because you don’t want to be seen as overly emotional. While this book is centered on Emily getting justice for herself and for the women who have died on her farm, by the time I finished this book all I could feel was the need to tell readers “I believe you.”
There are so many women and female-presenting persons who have their voices diminished and their knowledge dismissed. I hope this book helps them feel seen and understood.
But also if they’re just there for a creepy moving barn, ghosts, and gaslighting…that’s rad, too.
3. Chickens Could Eat Your Teeth
Look, writers have to research unique things. Did I need to find out about what chickens are capable of eating? Yes. Did I need to find out if they could eat human teeth? Yes. Now you have to know, too.
While they can eat human teeth and be totally fine, it would not be a great way to hide any evidence, because they wouldn’t break it down. The hens would be fine though. It’s a bit like how some birds eat gravel to help break down their food.
Anyway, chickens could eat your teeth. You’re welcome.
4. Turns out I really miss writing about music
I’m a former music journalist. It was my first career and I wrote for popular alternative newsweeklies and music magazines, and I loved it. Because I love music. I actually started writing fiction after leaving the journalism industry because I missed writing daily.
The Farmhouse has a soundtrack. The main character Emily’s late mother was a music producer. So part of her grieving her and remembering her are moments tied to specific songs. Building out the music layer of this book with songs that would give insight into who her mother had been added this extra spark for me in writing the book. I had to pick the perfect tracks for you to hear the book, too.
5. Home is always home
This book is also a bit of a love letter to Nebraska. I grew up in rural Nebraska—although I lived in a town much larger than the one nearest Emily and Josh in the book—and there was something nostalgic about getting to write about the beauty there. (I really regret having to cut a scene about Runzas, because iykyk.)
I wanted this book to capture the beauty of rural living. Nebraska is gorgeous. The sunrises are stunning. There’s a peacefulness and a slower pace that can provide respite and a place to be with your thoughts. But it’s also isolating and lonely. There is a lag to get to places, to get to your friends, to get help. Farm life is a hard life. It’s a different way of living, and while the characters in this book don’t work the land, they still have to adjust to being twenty minutes from an emergency vehicle arrival.
Many years ago, I brought my husband to visit my family in Nebraska (who absolutely still live there!) for the 4th of July. He was most excited about doing his own fireworks. We were driving along country roads, as is the way of things, and had to pull over so he could go into a cornfield in real life. The experience (and, yeah, there’s a pic) blew his mind. Being inside real cornfields is far more disorienting—and beautiful—than the corn mazes you find at fall festivals and pumpkin patches. That fish-out-of-water surprise and curiosity definitely fed into The Farmhouse.
ABOUT CHELSEA CONRADT
Chelsea Conradt (she/her) writes twisty speculative thrillers and horror including The Farmhouse. Her books are packed with both murder and kindness because we can be more than one thing.
When not writing stories that make you question what’s real, she is likely watching a baking show or a true-crime documentary. She is nothing if not on brand. Chelsea lives in Texas with her husband, son, and two big dogs. Find her online at chelseaconradt.com.
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