Return to Hawk Creek

Last year, I put the novel I wrote for National Novel Writing Month in this space.This year I will be putting the one I'm writing/revising. It's actually a manuscript my sisters, Mom, and I wrote and wrote and re-wrote. And then we have left it alone for a year. Now I'm reworking it and seeing how the story shapes up. Please feel free to read and sign the guestbook. I'd love to know your comments.

This book is very loosely based on something that happened in my childhood here in Locust Grove, Oklahoma. In 1977, three Girl Scouts were killed at Camp Scott. A local man was tried and found not guilty for the crimes. He died in prison a year later. He was there for unrelated crimes. No one else has ever been tried for the crimes. As a child, I remember our tiny town being a spotlight for the national media for some time. I have vivid memories of the times I had stayed at the camp--the tents, the deep woods surrounding us, the darkness.

Our book is fictional, but in writing it, we were influenced by the investigation of the crime and by the sudden, violent loss of three children who deserve to be alive today.