Before I began to write The Deepest Dark, I asked myself what would be the worst thing that could happen to a woman. And the answer was of course, to lose a child.
Novelist Abby Miller has lost not only her ten year old daughter Ellie in a horrific head-on collision as they are returning from Christmas shopping, but her husband, Corrie, as well. Following their deaths Abby sinks ever deeper into a black depression. She contemplates suicide as a way to be with them, and to end her unrelenting pain.
In a last desperate effort to find peace, she drives to the old isolated cabin in the woods where they spent a magical vacation together, wanting to believe they will be there waiting for her. At least in spirit, which she is not sure she believes in. Barring that, there are always the pills in her purse the doctor gave her to help her sleep.
The cabin at Loon Lake was her and Corey’s secret hideaway, and not even Abby’s sister, Karen, who she is close to, knows where it is.
But unknown to Abby, someone else does. Ken Roach is one of three men who have just escaped from prison. They are dangerous predators who will stop at nothing to get what they want. And to keep from going back to prison. They have already committed atrocious crimes, and so have nothing to lose.
And so a tale unfolds.
I like to write about ordinary women who are at a difficult time in their lives, and are suddenly faced with an external evil force. Women who are stronger than they think they are. I didn’t think a whole lot about theme until I had written a couple of books, but I realized with the writing of my third novel ‘Chill Waters’ that my books generally have to do with betrayal and abandonment in some form, and learning to trust again. And more important, learning to trust oneself. Almost any good book will tell you something about the author herself. (Or himself.) You can’t avoid it. But first and foremost I want to give readers a roller-coaster ride, one that keeps them on the edge of that proverbial seat and resonates in the imagination long after the last page is read. And readers tell me I’ve succeeded in that in “The Deepest Dark”.