Desolation Ghosts is a 65,000-word adult literary fiction novel in the vein of The Human Stain. It is set in North Cascades National Park and is about a missing traumatized female veteran with alcohol and relationship addictions who changes her mind about killing herself, but then falls off a mountain and must survive in the wilderness while park rangers battle over how much effort should be spent to locate her. The story takes place during the Covid-19 pandemic and the beginning of law enforcement reforms following the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. This book will appeal to readers who are interested in national parks, outdoor recreation, the Pacific Northwest, and the controversial issue of how emergency services treat people with mental health challenges. It includes exciting stories, based on real-life events, about using rock climbing and short-haul helicopter techniques to rescue a pack string mule who fell off a trail and a mountain climber who fell off a crag, a shoot-out and its impact on park rangers, a couple drownings, an aquatic body recovery and other sad outdoor tragedies, and funny and scary encounters with bears and other wildlife. If you like Jack Kerouac, Nevada Barr, Bree Loewen, Jon Krakauer, Michael Connelly, James Dickey's Deliverance, Matthew Quick's The Silver Linings Playbook or Scott Heim's Mysterious Skin, you may enjoy Desolation Ghosts.

Saturday, February 27, 2021

Excerpt - the Colonel

 Any woke person willing to read a paragraph I wrote and tell me if it's a form of racism or homophobia or just ignorant in some way I'm missing? I can't see a problem with it, but I've got a bad feeling about it ... Just because I don't want to be racist or homophobic doesn't mean I'm not sometimes by accident.

Alexander radioed Skagit LE Ranger Glenn Tricouni, a dark-haired native Kentuckian so Kentucky, he owns a hound dog, chickens, lots of guns, and probably a banjo. Some of the parkies refer to him and his horse-wrangling, blond husband, with an accent even thicker than Tricouni’s, as the Duke Boys of Skazzard County. He prefers the nickname Skagit 9-1-1 dispatchers gave him because of his deep, authoritative radio drawl: “the Colonel.” Tricouni, on patrol in the park, said he would head back to Marblemount.

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