Brother

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussion of bullying, sexual violence, rape, child abuse, child sexual abuse, addiction, graphic violence, sexual content, death, physical abuse, and emotional abuse.

In the Acknowledgements, Ahlborn admits that horror movies inspired her novel. She concedes a comparison to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), where a group of young people stumble into a rural setting and become captives to a family of cannibals. The relationship is overt, with the Morrows capturing and killing people before Momma cooks them. However, Momma has a type—young girls that look like her—while the family in Chainsaw doesn’t target a specific kind of person. The well-known character from Chainsaw is Leatherface, who captures the victims and dissects them with the titular chainsaw. Leatherface links to Momma, who organizes the lethal violence in Brother. At the same time, Leatherface and Reb have much in common: They’re workers who are arguably exploited by their other family members.

However, Ahlborn says that the primary inspiration for the novel was a more recent film, Chained (2012). As with Momma, the Chained killer, Bob, inflicts the trauma that he experienced as a child onto young women. Bob also trains a young person, Rabbit, whom he abducted, as Momma trains Reb and Michael.