At the core of St. Ulphia’s Dead, Scott Lambridis’ ideal-rending debut novel, a familiar cycle is challenged. Instead of birth>life>death — the oft-considered fundamental trio of human existence — love>death>rebirth claws to the forefront, shakes us bloody, and insists we begin again. One self at a time.

The inhabitants of St. Ulphia have been struck by an uncontrollable madness that seems to forever sweep the island. Researcher Mirs and his supervisor Jo pick up where the past scientific team left off — what is causing the cannibalistic Wendigo to possess these villagers? Why is there no body found after the Wendigo strikes? How can this mass outbreak be stopped?

Trapped within the confines of their respective job descriptions, both Mirs and Jo are responsible for finding answers, but as outsiders they struggle to know if what they are being told is true, if the villagers are actually eating one another in the nighttime, and if either of them have a firm enough grasp on their own selves to finish the task at hand.

Ultimately, the repetitive answers the villagers offer become far less important than all that goes unsaid. All that is slowly witnessed probes deeper questions still. Together, Mirs and Jo must unwillingly journey to the heart of a prolonged psychosis— their own, each having never before been considered, as well as that of every unique St. Ulphia inhabitant. 

Where does love come from? What is death? How do our names meet us in the shock of rebirth?

From page one, Lambridis paints a vivid community that modern science cannot touch. In an effort to solve the unsolvable, hilarity, grotesquery, discomfort, and a massive bee-filled-bottle of the unbelievable (perhaps magical?!) ensues, showing that even the most unimaginable forms of relationships, harm, and identity can be well grappled with when we set down black versus white thinking in favor of the gray. We each ultimately choose what we love and can best live by cracking wide open to learn how to die. There we will find ourselves.

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Scott Lambridis is a Bellingham-based writer and neurobiology lover whose fiction explores the strange edges of perception, time, and consciousness. His work has appeared in Slice, Fence, The Café Irreal, and HamLit.

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