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.

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Excerpt 4 - Drowning

Some awesome people pointed out a few spots in the book where I was lazy (though they were too nice to say that), so I'm going back to fill those spots in... which means going into more detail about one of my great fears - drowning. I hate drowning. Water is scary. But also beautiful:

“Emily,” she called again, but she was too far away, and the girl never resurfaced. Thornton looked back and saw her husband on the way in a motorboat. She kept swimming until she got to the spot she thought she’d seen Emily go under. She dove into the water over and over. Below the surface, she descended through layers, each greener and colder and murkier from suspended sediment than the last. Decaying plant matter caressed her face as she tried to force her eyes to penetrate deeper into the darkness, but Emily left no trail, no bubbles, no trout darting away from her body dropping way, way down past 500 feet, to the bottom of the lake, where the old mining town of Ruby Creek, flooded when the dam went up, lay rotting somewhere in the water. Thornton looked back toward the surface and could barely see the light. She heard deep, warped, and muffled voices calling for her, glanced back down, then kicked up, inhaling a huge gulp of air as soon as she breached the wall between sea and sky.

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