The story inside this book offers maximum creepiness, freaky googly-eyes, and dolls that move. If there was a dial on the outside of “How to Sell a Haunted House,” you wouldn’t be surprised to see it turned up high. She’d go home and forget it all happened. True Fact Number Two: they were creepy things, and the worst of her childhood. Truthfully, though, she’d probably just throw it all away later. He tried to bar Louise from getting their mother’s crafts and dolls, that awful taxidermed squirrel Nativity, all the marionettes and puppets and Pupkin, but Louise was adamant. He wanted the house cleaned out immediately, even before the funeral. It didn’t help that Mark was being a jerk. But then her parents were killed in an accident, she had to hurry home, and if that wasn’t enough heartbreak, she learned that they’d left everything to Mark, except their mother’s artwork. That was embarrassing and somewhat traumatic, which is why Louise moved to California long ago, as far from Charleston as she could get.

Sometimes, it felt as if Louise and Mark were raised with a third sibling, a ratty old puppet named Pupkin that their mother’d had since she was a child. Nancy Joyner had been a good mother, but her focus was more on doll collecting, puppet-making, and puppet-ministry for the church. She couldn’t say she had a bad childhood, but it wasn’t normal, either.

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