A Conversation With Depth

A year ago I was an out of work logger stuck on the end of a barstool like a mushroom decomposing dead wood. Now I guard a rift between worlds that leaks hungry things.

When a man named Bear lumbers into my one-stoplight Rocky Mountain town and drags me into the job, Tamarack Falls and all its people become my responsibility.

Lowe Alexander. Responsibility. Most people around here would tell you those words got no business being thrown together.

Bear says he has his reasons for drafting me to be a caretaker of The Scar. He’s teaching me things about myself. My heritage. About why I’ve always been good at running, why my eyes tend to glow yellow in the darkest part of the night.

Now I spend my days chasing man-eating lizards, bargaining with creepy tree spirits, and tracking down missing persons. The hours are terrible, the pay even worse, and the job sites are always hazardous.

When an old crush asks me to help her Search and Rescue team track down a missing hunter, I smell blood. A lot of it. But it’s the lingering scent of one of The Banished that’s put my head on swivels. For they are always angry. Always hungry.

And now one of them is on our trail.

What price is too great to stop a killing spree?

Elizabeth Benoit ran for sheriff to wipe out the corruption in the good old boys network of Eckardt County, but she has yet to break in her shoes when a stranger’s body is found in a ravine. With her ex back in town, a new deputy detective on the edge of losing control, and a crooked ex-sheriff out for revenge, Elizabeth’s resources are stretched thin. And then the second body drops.

Fearing a serial killer on the loose, Elizabeth launches an investigation that lays bare more than one family secret: The Kauffmann matriarch is full of advice, but her progeny have a mean streak that leaves a path of destruction in their wake. The Meyer patriarch has his own agenda, and the Kauffmanns have been a thorn in his ambition for too long.

Elizabeth and her deputies are about to face off against odds that are not in their favor. Only one source can tip the scales, but will she sell her soul for his help?

A mythic fantasy with the cosmic scope of Tolkien’s Silmarillion and the promised spring of Lewis’s Narnia, told in the spirit of older epics — for readers who love stories where the great battles are fought first within the heart.

“Enidor clearly felt that something awful was happening to him, but he could do nothing about it. He had been toughened up by distant expeditions and the wielding of various weapons, which he had proven more than once in sea battles or skirmishes with pirates and slave traders. However, he could not fight the demonic forces from another world that lurked in the distant seas and about which he had heard in old sagas and legends. To fight the invisible creatures of the Underworld or the Mysterious Land, who could take on different shapes, one needed a weapon of the most powerful kind — a weapon that was not at all like a sword or an enchanted amulet. A weapon called Eithua.

No one really knew what Eithua was, but according to legends, many in the world knew how to use this weapon and could perform amazing miracles with it. They said that it was available to anyone who wished to obtain it and that one should seek it out in the Realm of Spirits. They also spoke of the One who had made it and who could give it to people, as no one could find or craft such a weapon without the help of the King of Light.”

With Lieutenant Bob Cannon, and Special Constable Rick Bash cleaning up the law in Willow Gate and Gabe Roy no longer a threat. Tyrell, Riley, and Colby leave behind the Brubakers and Pete Cross and head into uncharted Indian Territory in search of Ski-be-nan-ted aka (the Apache Kid). They also take on a side job to track down escaped fugitives Barclay Atalmore and his Rebel Rangers. For the three this is their first job as Private Investigation and Security personnel under the new 1892 laws of Canada that abolished Bounty Hunting as a trade, and the laws they are required to follow hinder their journey.

In 1997, the author quits her high-flying job in London, orders a classic Indian Enfield Bullet motorbike and goes off for a year on a 17,000 mile circuit of India. She wants adventures, and as a solo traveller, has plenty of them. Follow her on her travels discovering an unknown world of motorbiking, wanderlust and vibrant culture. Humorous and well-written, this refreshingly honest book recounts her numerous mishaps, both on and off the bike. This story shows how a can-do attitude can compensate for inexperience and will appeal to those with a « just do it » attitude to life. And for that you don’t even need to be a biker.