Coffins [Hardcover]

Rodman Philbrick (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 9, 2002

Physician Davis Bentwood, making a lengthy housecall at the Coffin family mansion on the coast of Maine, finds the newborn grandson of Captain Cash Coffin, stiff and cold as a block of ice, in a cradle not ten feet from a roaring fire. Young Davis can find no medical explanation for the baby's death.

After a mysterious accident at the family shipyard caused the simultaneous death of his twin sons, Cash Coffin locked himself in study, and threatened to shoot anyone who approached. Cash's youngest son, the dwarf Jebediah, has asked his old friend Davis to try to help the old man.

Another Coffin son, an experienced ship's master, dies at sea in a freak accident that defies a natural explanation. And on a moonless night, Davis Bentwood is awakened by an eerie light that leads him to the Coffin family's darkest secret.

Cash Coffin traded in slaves.

Davis Bentwood's blood-chilling discovery holds the key to the family's destruction. Can the ancient evil being visited upon the Coffins be stopped?

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Best known for his young adult novels (Freak the Mighty), Philbrick swerves from his usual path with this adults-only supernatural horror show, certainly not for the squeamish or faint of heart. Just before the Civil War, young doctor Davis Bentwood befriends a dwarf named Jebediah Coffin. Jeb may be small of stature, but he has the brains and energy of 10 men. Davis is a doctor who does not practice; he is a lazy and self-centered young man who dabbles in science and the new fad of transcendentalism. When an urgent telegram summons Davis to the Coffin family home in Maine, he is unexpectedly thrown into a shocking world of curses, madness, malevolence, hauntings and violent death. Jeb's twin brothers have been cut to pieces in a sawmill, and his baby nephew is found frozen to death in a stifling hot nursery. Jeb's father, Capt. Cash Coffin, raves like a lunatic, and the entire family is paralyzed with fear and grief. Davis learns that the wealthy Coffins are proud abolitionists, even using their home as part of the Underground Railroad to help escaping slaves reach safety in Canada. He also learns of a terrible secret and a horrible curse put on Jeb's father 20 years earlier. The curse is now acting itself out, and the Coffin family is crazed with fear as the Coffin sons die gruesome deaths one by one. The body count is high, and Philbrick uses gloomy, graphic and gory means to dispatch the victims, but the story lacks suspense and pegs very low on the spooky meter. Sadly, the well-crafted pre-Civil War abolitionist angle is merely window dressing for an unconvincing tale of superstition awash in blood and body parts.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

"An old-fashioned morality tale, with the children paying for the sins of the father."--The Bangor News

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Forge Books; 1st edition (February 9, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312872739
• ISBN-13: 978-0312872731
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,630,760 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Historical, So-So Horror, March 21, 2004

By 

Jennifer Juday "Working Mom & Cook" (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Coffins (Mass Market Paperback)

COFFINS is the first novel by Rodman Philbrick that I have read. Based on this, I would read another of his books, but I will not be in a huge hurry to do so.

The narrator of COFFINS, Davis Bentwood, is a physician and a transcendentalist, a follower of the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The opening sections of COFFINS, which deal with this very reasonable man resisting and then acknowledging the existence of something that science cannot explain, are engaging. After that, the horror story plays out in a fairly predictable way.

When Bentwood finally unravels the heart of the mystery, the pieces fit together, but are missing the kind of charge that makes it hard to put down really great horror novels. I was frustrated at how slowly things moved when I could see where we were going. The puzzle, when finally revealed, seemed a little thin and unstaisfying.

Philbrick clearly loves the classics. COFFINS feels like an homage that never quite takes on a life of its own, though the explicitness of some of the events is very modern.

COFFINS does offer the pleasures of a good historical novel. The novel is set just before the Civil War, and the political and moral conversations of the day are quite interesting. Frederick Douglass and Elizabeth Cady Stanton actually appear as characters.

Overall, three stars. It was good enough that I went ahead and finished it, but isn't one that I'll rush out to share with my friends.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Nothing Amazing, June 13, 2005

By 

J. Hansbrough (Taneytown, MD) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Coffins (Mass Market Paperback)

Like other reviewers have said, this book was lacking something. I believe that the book lacked subtlety and therefore was not as suspenseful or page-turning as it could have been. Sure, the plot was interesting enough, but nothing was left to the imagination and there was so much predictability and over-foreshadowing.

I didn't stop reading it halfway through, but I don't think I'll read any more Philbrick novels.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not good., February 26, 2004

By 

Brian M. Naughton (London, Greater london United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Coffins (Hardcover)

The characters are well drawn and sympathetic but that's the only good thing I can say about this. The supernatural horror that haunts the family is all powerful so its a bit like watching Final Destination but without the laughs....you just watch helplessly as people die in various gruesome ways. I think the author was trying for a Fall of the House of Usher sense of doom but it never really comes across. There is no explaination given why the horror is so powerful. There's a lot of heavy handed preaching about the evils of slavery. Lastly the main character is pretty spineless and doesn't make one effective move or plan.