Press Release
New novel, Seneca Wood, explores issues of exploitation, environment of the Mountain State within a thriller framework
Contact information:
Author: Publisher:
Gary Clites Casperian Books, LLC
www.garyclites.com P.O. Box 161026
gclites@verizon.net Sacramento, CA 95816
410-257-2885 publicity@casperianbooks.com
“Outsiders have always taken advantage of West Virginia,” according to author Gary Clites. “From lumber to coal to inexpensive labor, people with money have, over the centuries, come into the state, exploited the resources, and taken the profits back with them.” Clites sees the actions of the mobsters in his new thriller, Seneca Wood (Casperian Books, 264 pp., $15), as a metaphor for the exploitation of his home state.
In the book, the Baltimore-based mob is using the state as a dumping ground for bodies and a place to launder money without drawing much attention. When bodies are accidentally discovered by the WVU scuba team in Cheat Lake, the bad guys scramble to cover their tracks. They try to pin the crimes on Woodrow Garrett, a disgraced former reporter hiding from society in the Monongahela National Forest near Seneca Rocks in Pendleton County.
“The mob has taken over a chicken processing plant in Petersburg as a way to launder money from drugs and protection rackets,” Clites explained. “Now, they’re trying to build a housing development and golf course in the Monongahela Forest and they want Garrett’s land, so why not try to pin the murders on him?”
Clites, a native of Mineral County, 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 Cheat 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, an accident, 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?”
Clites, who currently resides near the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, says it was natural to place his first novel in his home state. “Most of the book is set in the Monongahela National Forest around Seneca Rocks,” he said. “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 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 area a bit. 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.”
And then there’s that question of exploitation. “It seems like everyone from the robber barons to big modern corporations have taken advantage of West Virginia’s native resources, why wouldn’t organized crime?” He says that was a factor in his decision to set the novel in the state: “Actually, the isolation of the mountains make it the perfect setting for a thriller. West Virginians are very used to having to fight for themselves, and that’s what my main character has to do.”
Seneca Wood is available through bookstores and online booksellers including Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.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.