Deep Down by Karen Harper
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Karen Harper has been published for 25 years, and in 2006 she won the Mary Higgins Clark Award. In DEEP DOWN, Harper explores the theme of "you can't go home again." Jessie Lockwood is notified that her mother never returned from counting the endangered and lucrative herb ginseng near Jessie's Appalachian hometown of Deep Down, Kentucky. Now a research scientist in Lexington, Jessie returns home to find her missing mother with the help of Sheriff Drew Webb, the man she secretly loved. In a race against time, Jessie and Drew learn something strange is happening to women in the deep woods. Amid legend and fear, only two things make sense to Jessie. At any cost, she is desperate to find her mother. And she can't help falling desperately in love with Drew all over again.Romantic Times Bookreviews praises DEEP DOWN: "A strong plot, a pair of well-written characters and a genuinely spooky atmosphere add up to yet another sterling effort from Harper. Fast-paced and absorbing, this one will keep readers turning pages far into the night."
"Unlike most novelists who seem to start their creative process with character or plot, I usually start with setting," says Harper. "I need a place I love which is evocative--and, hopefully, fairly isolated. I love using small towns, whether in Amish Ohio, the Everglades of Florida, or Appalachian Kentucky. My agents call my suspense novels enclave books, that is, books that take the reader into a world with which they might be unfamiliar. The mountains and valleys of Appalachian Kentucky really speak to me, and I used this setting once before in an earlier thriller, THE BABY FARM. My characters live deep down in the backcountry of Appalachia. But the novel is also about what is deep down in people's hearts--fears, family, friends, lovers and life's trials."
"Let me add that the thick forests and dangerous cliffs of this area of Appalachia make a great setting for a thriller. First of all, cell phones often don't work in this region, so it's difficult to summon help. Secondly, there is something inherently terrifying about primeval forests. It worked for Nathanial Hawthorne and the Brothers Grimm, and it still works today. Also, I love places that give the writer an automatic cultural clash to work with, in this instance, the locals vs. the outsiders. Lastly, I wanted to focus on the ginseng trade: that herb has such potent myths surrounding it that it gave me a whole extra layer of terror on top of local Appalachian hauntings, called 'haints.' "Harper has seen many changes in the world of writing for publication. "When I started out, I wrote on a yellow legal pad, typed the manuscript numerous times, knew no author, no agent, nor anyone in a writer's group. Now I have a lovely office, technology at my fingertips and almost 50 books in print. Thank heavens for computers and the Internet; I haven't snail-mailed a manuscript or revisions for years. But the nitty-gritty of the imaginative, creative process remains amazingly the same."
Karen Harper currently writes contemporary suspense for Mira Books and historical novels for Putnam. She and her husband divide their time between Columbus, Ohio, and Naples, Florida. For more information visit her website at www.karenharperauthor.com
Contributing editor Sibylle Barrasso is the author of Dark Waters. She was a finalist in the "St. Martins Press Best First Private Eye Novel Contest," received an award from Sue Grafton at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, and was a contributing author of Bad Boys and Bad Girls in the Badlands, a critical anthology about mysteries set in the Southwest.ThrillerFest
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