A lonely cemetery caretaker who surrounds himself with taxidermied “family and friends” longs for a living companion—until he meets a woman who may be just as twisted and dangerous as he is.

SYNOPSIS:

In the decaying Southern town of Broken Fork, Kentucky, a deep dark secret is hidden behind the rusted gates of Shady Pines Cemetery, cared for by Dusty Graves—a lonely, soft-spoken groundskeeper whose greatest wish is not to tend to the dead, but to belong to the living.

Dusty lives alone in a Victorian house perched beside the cemetery. Inside, however, he is never truly alone. His home is filled with his carefully preserved “family”—taxidermied and embalmed companions posed in frozen moments of celebration, conversation, and affection. To Dusty, they are not corpses. They are comfort. They are permanence. They are proof that love never has to leave.

Beneath his unsettling rituals lies a deeply romantic soul shaped by memories of a warm, devoted childhood. Through haunting flashbacks, we see the unconditional love Dusty once experienced from his eccentric family—love so pure and constant that he spends his adult life desperately trying to recreate it. His methods are grotesque, but his longing is heartbreakingly human: he simply wants someone who will stay.

With the quiet assistance of a corrupt sheriff who supplies him with bodies and keeps local suspicions buried, Dusty maintains his fragile world. Yet despite his “family,” loneliness gnaws at him. His attempts at romance repeatedly fail, ending in tragic obsession and preservation. Each rejection deepens his belief that real love can only survive if it never has the chance to leave.

Then, on the night of his birthday, a mysterious woman arrives at his door.

Her name is Misty.

Charming, beautiful, and strangely familiar, Misty seems to understand Dusty in ways no one ever has. When he discovers she travels with her own preserved parents, Dusty believes fate has finally delivered the soulmate he has spent his life searching for. For the first time, he experiences something dangerously close to happiness.

He wished for love. It finally arrived. And it may be the most dangerous thing he's ever let in.

Blending the psychological unease of Edward Scissorhands and the atmospheric dread associated with A Man Named Dusty Graves is a Southern Gothic horror romance about loneliness, devotion, and the terrifying lengths people will go to avoid being abandoned.