In the rural backwaters of North Carolina, violence is not an anomaly. It is inheritance.
The Pigs Are Starving is a brutal work of literary horror that fuses Southern Gothic, Indigenous folklore, and institutional terror into a story about debt, land, and the systems that consume people without ever learning their names.
Colt Haggard grows up in a county hollowed out by poverty, corruption, and addiction. Drugs move faster than opportunity. Law enforcement blurs into organized crime. The land itself seems to remember every wrong committed against it. When Colt becomes entangled with a violent syndicate rumored to be more than human, he begins to understand that some evils do not hunt randomly. They audit.
As secrets surface-environmental crimes buried by power, a murdered attorney who tried to stop them, and an ancient force awakened by blood spilled on stolen soil-Colt realizes he is not being punished for who he is. He is being processed for where he comes from.
This is not a story about monsters hiding in the woods.
It is about order without mercy.
About systems that call suffering "necessary."
About debts that compound across generations.
About hunger that never ends.
Unflinching, atmospheric, and deeply unsettling, The Pigs Are Starving is a novel for readers who believe horror should do more than scare-it should indict.
