Calvert Release
Wood Garrett has a problem. A disgraced reporter hiding in the mountains of his native West Virginia, he finds his peaceful life shattered when someone who wants his land tries to frame him for murder to get it. Before he knows it, his friends have been drawn into the trouble, and he has to take up the fight to save their lives. He quickly finds himself in a battle that involves a corrupt chicken factory, crooked cops, hired killers, tabloid TV reporters, fake ecoterrorists, and very hungry bears.
That’s the situation in Seneca Wood, the new novel by Chesapeake Beach resident Gary Clites being released nationwide this month by Casperian Books. “The book is a thriller about an ordinary guy hiding out from the world in a cabin in the mountains. His world is intruded upon when criminals, who want his property, try to frame him for murder,” Clites explained. “It’s about an ordinary guy who is forced to deal with a situation far beyond his experiences.”
Clites says he got his inspiration for the novel while he was a student at West Virginia University. “When I was in college, my friends and I spent a lot of time at a lake just a few miles outside of town,” he said. “There was an old disused road there that ran to an old abandoned bridge to an island where a bunch of bikers used to party. One day, the school scuba team went diving in the area and found a dead body. I don't remember what the situation was, whether it was a suicide, a murder, or what? But while the police were investigating, they found a stolen car in the water near the bridge - then another car. Then they found a bunch of illegal slot machines, and other things. It was nothing as extreme as what happens in the book, but the idea of criminals using the backwater of the lake as a dumping ground always stuck with me. What would happen when the police discovered it? What would that push the bad guys to do?”
In Seneca Wood, the mafia is using a chicken packaging plant in West Virginia as a venue to launder money. When the police discover bodies they’ve dumped in the lake, the criminals decide to frame a local man whose land they want to grab. “Most of the novel is set in the Monongehela National Forest of West Virginia, in the area around Seneca Rocks,” said Clites. “It’s an area I particularly love, and a location which I consider one of the most beautiful places in the world. I was visiting there a few years ago when the novel fully formed in my mind. Honestly, it was the place that drove my ideas to coalesce into a clear plot. That said, when the time came to write the book, I intentionally fictionalized the location. I did not want people to feel that this scene or that was set on their land or in their store, etc., so I reimagined the locations in a somewhat made up version of the area. When you read the book, you'll understand why.”
While thrillers are a popular type of book, they are seldom set in the mountains of West Virginia. “I wanted to take the traditional elements of a thriller, and move them to a less traditional setting in an oddball situation to develop a story that was a little more quirky and unusual than the traditional novel in the genre,” Clites explained.
With food scares in the news these days, a book about mob involvement in the meat packing industry could be scary on a number of levels. Clites says the book, “is partly about how people relate to the food chain. We tend to think we are in control and that we are on top of things, but we're not. You’ve seen that in the news a lot lately. In the novel, nature asserts itself in some pretty ugly ways.”
Clites has been a teacher at Northern High School in Owings for over 20 years. The classes he teaches, including creative writing, journalism, newspaper and broadcasting, are all about writing, so his authoring a book may not surprise his students. “I’ve always written,” he said, “mostly journalism, but I love fiction, and creating this book has given me the opportunity to explore a kind of writing that was a real challenge.
Seneca Wood is available through bookstores and all online booksellers including Amazon.com, Borders.com, etc. For more information, to read the first chapter online, and for links to places you can get the book, visit the author’s website at www.garyclites.com. The book contains adult language, adult situations and violence. It is probably not appropriate for younger readers.