ZIGZAG GIRL Has Arrived — and So Has the Jersey Devil
Book arrives. Devil rises. The veil gets thin.
She’s here! ZIGZAG GIRL arrived from London on Halloween eve — exactly when she was meant to. The story takes place during Halloween/Samhain, and Lucy Moon, my main character, was born on that night when the veil thinly flickers between worlds. So receiving the book on that night felt like the story stepping into the physical world at last.
Outside, cornstalks rustled like people moving just out of sight. Children in costumes laughed and darted between shadows. A night of masks, mischief, and wonder — when the ordinary blurs and something else breathes through.
It brought me back to the night I traveled into the New Jersey Pine Barrens, where Lucy goes in search of a clue — and where I first felt the pulse of the story.
A million acres of wilderness. Fire-touched leaves. Pines leaning like old storytellers. Ghost towns like Harrisville, Batsto, and Martha Furnace—all ruins with mysterious ends, whispering their stories to anyone who will listen. Lynchings… Ghost forest: dead trees that remain standing… Sugar sand that sucks people in… Silence wide enough to fall into.
Ghost town…
But the Pine Barrens are not empty. They are inhabited by story. And the oldest, strangest story of all: the Jersey Devil.
In 1735, a woman named Mother Leeds discovered she was pregnant with her thirteenth child. Thirteen mouths, thirteen winters of hunger. Exhaustion, despair, rage — all the feelings mothers are still not allowed to confess. So, when the time came, she cried out: “Let it be the Devil, then!”
The baby was born perfectly human.
For one breath.
Two.
And then—
The transformation began.
The skin split.
Bones bent.
Hooves struck the floor.
Wings unfurled like shadows catching fire.
Eyes glowed like embers waking.
The child screamed, but it was no longer a child.
It tore up the chimney and vanished into the Pine Barrens, where it is said to fly, cry, hunt, and remember the shape it once was.
Mother Leeds, who cursed her thirteenth child—was she villain or victim? In ZIGZAG GIRL, women’s curses become their power.
But the story begins far earlier.
The Lenni Lenape, who lived in the Barrens long before Europeans arrived, believed the forests were alive with Mising — a powerful spirit of transformation, change, and the wild unseen. Costumes, masks, wings, horns — ceremonial expressions of becoming.
Mising wasn’t a monster. Mising was possibility. Life-force. Magic. Awe.
So the Jersey Devil may not be evil, but a remembered echo of that ancient truth: The Pine Barrens are a place where forms shift. Where you can become more than you were.
Or less.
To this day, people driving in the vicinity of the Barrens report sightings and tell stories about a strange creature they encountered. The night I visited the Jersey Devil’s graveyard, where it’s said that he hides and sleeps for fifty years and then rises again to terrorize, the air crackled with blue motes, the ground hissed sharp and snake-tongued. What haunted me most: the Devil was BORN HUMAN. It’s a tale of transformation—from human to monster. And that day, in the place where the Devil slept, the dark heart of the murderer in ZIGZAG GIRL burst into life, and I knew what I needed to write.
Because the murderer Lucy is hunting in the novel — was not born a monster either. Something happened. A transformation. A curse spoken or inherited. A shape taken because another shape was denied. And Lucy — like all of us — must face the question: What are we becoming?
Here are 2 Prompts that I hope will inspire you in these dark days and nights:
1) The Jersey Devil was born human but transformed at the moment of birth. Write about a character standing at their own moment of transformation—not thrust upon them but chosen. What do they leave behind? What emerges? Start with: “The last human thing I did was...”
2) Think of a moment when you changed — even a little. A season shift. A heartbreak. A risk taken. What fell away? What grew wings?
Write one sentence about that moment.
Just one.
Keep it.
Thank you for being here, for reading, for traveling with me between the visible and the invisible worlds. More soon — March draws closer…
See you next month!
Ruth
ZIGZAG GIRL is action-packed and thrilling, but it’s the extraordinary cast that really make this sing. Pure magic.
--Sarah Hilary, author of BLACK THORN
Links for Zigzag Girl:
If you want to read it now: Order from the UK:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Zigzag-Girl-Ruth-Knafo-Setton/dp/1917788037
If you can wait till March 2nd 2026: Preorder from the US:
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Utterly fantastic, Ruth!!♥️