“The Saturday Night Ghost Club,” by Craig Davidson, is an endearing coming of age story about Jake Baker, now a neurosurgeon, then a nerdy 12-year-old kid, living in seedy Niagara Falls in the 1980’s. He spent that summer with crazy Uncle Calvin and a handful of friends hunting ghosts and monsters. Jake and Uncle C couldn’t be more different. Jake keeps his nose in a book most of the time, and Uncle C runs a curio shop with a “Psycho-Phone” that he says you can use to speak to the dead. Calvin is forever an adolescent, and Jake at twelve is mature beyond his years. When they get Jake’s two summer friends involved in the weekly ritual of investigating unexplained ghosts and things that go bump in the night, what is learned are family secrets long buried and never discussed.
The summer passes quickly as the group investigates local legends, but they find the most frightening of them all is the one trapped in Uncle Calvin’s memory. Suddenly, it all becomes clear as to Uncle C’s troubled mind.
Woven with the long gaze back to that summer is the adult Jake trying to make his way. He is doing his best to save lives as a neurosurgeon, and be a parent to his own son. His chosen profession has victories and devastating losses, including the aftermath of trauma — both his and his patients’. If only he could use his scalpel and remove terror.
First of all, “The Saturday Night Ghost Club” is not a scary book. If you are looking for Stephen King chills, this is not the book for you. If you like “Stranger Things” and “Stand by Me,” this is the book for you. “The Saturday Night Ghost Club” is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. It’s exquisitely written, incredibly clever, and laugh out loud funny. I can picture the 1980’s, and easily envision a boy on his bike with a lighthearted plan to spend time with his uncle, and how it all became more profound than anyone envisioned.
“The Saturday Night Ghost Club,” by Craig Davidson. You won’t have a ghost of a chance putting it down.
