Erin A. Craig, author of the bestselling YA gothic fantasy novel House of Salt and Sorrows, crafts another dark fairy tale in The Thirteenth Child, a reimagining of “Godfather Death” by the Brothers Grimm. When Hazel is born to parents already struggling to feed 12 other children, the god of death—Merrick the Dreaded End—whisks her away to raise her as his own. Merrick proclaims that Hazel will become a great healer and bestows upon her the ability to instantly treat the sick. But there’s a catch: if a patient is marked for death, she must obey the call and kill them herself. After the king mysteriously falls ill, Hazel is summoned to the palace, where she grows closer to the king’s family and begins questioning everything she’s been taught to believe. Craig spoke with PW about her lifelong love of fairy tales and using her work to grapple with life’s tough questions.
Why did you decide to use “Godfather Death” as the framework for The Thirteenth Child?
I guess I’ve just kind of made a career in twisting fairy tales in dark and unexpected ways. I’ve been hooked on fairy tales all my life. My first book, House of Salt and Sorrows, was a retelling of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” mixed with some Edgar Allan Poe.
When I was trying to get the idea for what became Small Favors, I had been looking through one of my Brothers Grimm anthologies and I came across “Godfather Death.” It’s not one of their big classic ones, but I was like, “That sounds like a fun title.” It was such an interesting story—Gods visiting a couple who don’t want their child, and in trying to get rid of it, they foist it off on a benefactor. For whatever reason, they say no to God. They obviously say no to the Devil, but when Death comes, they say yes. As a mom, I was so horrified. Who would give their child to Death? It took me a couple of readings to instead be like, “Why did Death come for the child?”
Even though that story wasn’t quite what I was looking for [for Small Favors], there’s a scene where Death takes the young physician to a candle cavern and shows him all these candles, which each represent one human life. It was such a beautifully striking image. I could not get it out of my head.
What elements of “Godfather Death” did you include in The Thirteenth Child and how did you make them your own?
The premise is pretty much the same, but the main character of the fairy tale meets a very different end than Hazel does. I thought it would be more fun to explore what this story would be like if we had a young plucky heroine who’s trying hard to do good. I wanted to play with the role of death as well. In The Thirteenth Child we have the Dreaded End Merrick as the death god. I wanted to explore what that relationship would be like for Hazel growing up, knowing the death god wanted her.
Because they’re writing short stories, the Grimm brothers make it very easy for the main character. “He was a great healer because Death said he was.” I really wanted to show Hazel going through the process of learning to be a healer. So we do see a lot of her studying and researching and doing her first surgery, all stretched out throughout her childhood.
There’s also a little bit of inspiration from “The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers.” There’s a plague going on that she’s got to find a cure for, so there’s a little bit of body horror. It was fun to take the very base story of the Grimms’ story and flesh it out more, give it more high stakes and drama.
What initially drew you to fantasy and from where do you pull inspiration for your stories?
Fantasy is just fun. I was one of those kids who was reading fairy tales long past the point they probably should have been. My mom was always like, “You should be reading up [for your age level].”
My librarian gave me Robin McKinley’s Beauty; that was the first time I’d ever read a fairy tale that sprawled out across an entire book. It was so exciting, because you got to see all of Beauty’s inner thoughts and desires. I also grew up in the ’90s, so Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark was making the rounds and R.L. Stine was in his heyday with Goosebumps.
I think fantasy is a natural fit for me: you get the magical, you get the supernatural, you get all the things that are fun to escape into—a world that’s not like ours. The problems are grand and epic, but fun, you know? They’re curses and hexes and not, like, taxes and cancer.
In your acknowledgments, you write: “There are no big moments in life. Every giant joy, every bitter heartache is made up of all the little, seemingly ordinary events that led to it.” How does this idea appear in Hazel’s story?
It was really fun to examine my own life and the little moments that led up to [the publication of The Thirteenth Child]. There are a lot of things that happen in the beginning of the book that might make readers go, “Why are we witnessing this?”
We see her parents grappling with her mother’s pregnancy and the knowledge that they can’t take care of this additional child up until Hazel’s last few moments of life. You can kind of start to see how some of the little things that happen in childhood that might just be a normal day out with your family can snowball into moments later in life that become so big and important. If you trace the path back, it’s all because of these tiny things that you might not have even noticed at the time. Seemingly ordinary moments do mean so much in the end. Writing this was a great exercise in self-examination and appreciating those moments where it feels like nothing’s happening. This moment doesn’t matter. And then it does.
What are you working on next?
My adult debut A Land So Wide will be coming out from Pantheon next fall. It’s a Canadian take on Tam Lin, but with vampires. And then I’ve got the third book in the Sisters of the Salt series coming out in summer 2026. There’s no title yet for it yet, but it’s Lenore’s story.
The Thirteenth Child by Erin A. Craig. Delacorte, $20.99 Sept. 24 ISBN 978-0-593-48258-2
