What do a college town, a middle-school biology project, Sasquatch, psychics, missing persons, alien abduction, and a billion year-old human have in common?
Meet John Densch.
You were unable to respond, so I said, "That's the legend. But there are no bog monsters. Do you see a bog monster here?"
"No," you said, looking around.
"Neither do I. Maybe there's really nothing to be afraid of here...?"
You didn't answer, but after a few moments you got on the balls of your feet, ran ahead and stopped at a bend in the trail to wait for me. Ooops, I thought, this didn't go right. I resolved to repeat it until you got so sick of the notion that you'd lose any reaction to it. When Doreen picked up on this, she had a heyday explaining to me why this kind of irony is lost on children and asking what was I thinking, and finally pleading: Could I leave her only child alone with my pretzel psychology?
You and I never did work out what a bog monster would look like, but pretty soon we were discussing it like a bad children's book -- "daddy, I told you that's a silly story" -- not exactly the fear tamer I had hoped for, but it lost its lightning-rod status. After a
Let me straight up and tell you this is an excellent novel,but it isn't horror and it isn't science fiction.
The Bog Monster of Booker Creek is a story of John Densch, a husband and a father who gets sucked into a story that becomes a series of events bigger that sweep him along.
Those hoping for a foray into a monster novel or an excursion of cryptozoology are going to be disappointed. This tale is about metaphysics: what we know and how we know it as well as the nature of reality and and other heady stuff.
This reviewer could have been disappointed as I like my literature firmly escapist, but this well-written novella captured me from the first page with very believable characters dealing with issues not far from our own concerns.
C. Alan Loewen
http://literary-equine.livejournal.com/
