Abandon

Sometimes, I think a great reading experience is just a matter of picking up a certain book at the exact right moment. That's what happened with Abandon by Blake Crouch.


Early Sunday morning, the power was out and I was too stressed about the possibility of frozen pipes to even think about crawling back into bed. My Kindle didn't have a full charge and if someone hits a pole, it usually takes quilt a while for them to get thing fixed -- especially if it's icy out and more than one person hit more than one pole... Don't ask me how long it takes them to get around to taking care of a live wire lying across the front yard!

I didn't want to run my battery dead in the middle of a book, so I picked up the one at the top of the library pile. I'd read Desert Places when it first came out and although I couldn't tell you anything about that book now, I do know that it blew me away at the time.

Here's the description of Abandon from Blake Crouch's website:

On Christmas Day in 1893, every man, woman and child in a remote mining town will disappear, belongings forsaken, meals left to freeze in vacant cabins, and not a single bone will be found--not even the gold that was rumored to have been the pride of this town will be found either. One hundred and thirteen years later, two backcountry guides are hired by a leading history professor and his journalist daughter to lead them into the abandoned mining town so that they can learn what happened. This has been done once before but the people that went in did not come out. With them is a psychic, and a paranormal photographer--the town is rumored to be haunted. They've come to see a ghost town, but what they are about to discover is that twenty miles from civilization, with a blizzard bearing down, they are not alone, and the past is very much alive....

I've always been a sucker for tales of people who mysteriously vanish.  The power was back on within the hour, but by then I was hooked.  This was the perfect book to read while sort of snowed in (I could have left the house if I really needed to, but didn't want to risk the minivan on those roads)  The fictional town of Abandon is a few miles up the mountains from Silverton, Colorado -- we went over Engineer Pass earlier this year. And toured the Old Hundred Mine, so the settings of the book were easy for me to visualize.

I don't usually recommend horror novels on my blog, but this one is GOOD. It's gory in spots, so read at your own risk.