Oblivion Girls is set in 1938 New York State. It's a first person noire-adjacent horror mystery that's shaped by my brief stint living in a secluded cabin in the mountains (when I started writing it.)
Here is the synopsis:
The worst hell is the one you make yourself…
It's 1938. Norman Hewitt is an NYC homicide detective with a haunted past. Still anguishing over the loss of his wife and only daughter, he goes on a pilgrimage to their once frequented lakeside camping spot in the country. But his hopes of finally laying his demons to rest are quickly scuttled when he wrecks his car taking a detour. The only thing around for miles is Juniper Gates, a secluded orphanage for girls, tucked away in the Catskills where time seems to have stopped.
Norman finds himself stranded there indefinitely as the orphanage has no working vehicle, no working phone, and no one seems to ever come by the house from the outside world. Forced to settle in and while away his time at a strange place that becomes stranger by the day, he begins to spend time with some of the less caustic residents. Agnes, a strange girl continually spying on him, shares her account of a cover-up and a girl who went missing from the house, a mystery too enticing to ignore. But as he tugs at the veil of the old orphanage, an insidious conspiracy comes into focus that plunges him into a twisted nightmare of dark memories, horrifying secrets, and worst fears come to life.
If you're a movie person, my new title is like the tragic existential journey of wonderment in 'What Dreams May Come' with the world-bending madness of 'Inception' and the traumatic psychological dread of 'Jacob's Ladder.'
It's dark, provocative and visceral.
Themes include:
Grief and guilt
The fluidity of memory
Empathy and forgiveness and who deserves them
Keeping secrets
Concrete versus abstract thought
Autonomy and consent
The cycle of violence
Self flagellation
Perdition and purgatory
It's is a slow boil that bubbles over and out of control just after you think you've settled in. It's both heart wrenching and heartwarming and you'll feel conflicted about many of the characters.
Here's a Pinterest mood board for the story if you're interested in that.
Here's the Spotify playlist for the story which I guess is also a sort of mood board.
Oblivion Girls is available for download as an ebook on Amazon for Kindle or the Kindle app. It's on promotion for the first three days, (as is traditional,) so you can acquire it for free if you snatch it up quickly.
