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Summary
Summary
On Christmas Day in 1893, every man, woman and child in a remote gold mining town disappeared, belongings forsaken, meals left to freeze in vacant cabins, and not a single bone was ever found. One hundred thirteen years later, two backcountry guides are hired by a history professor and his journalist daughter to lead them into the abandoned mining town so that they can learn what happened. With them is a psychic, and a paranormal photographer--as the town is rumored to be haunted. A party that tried to explore the town years ago was never heard from again. What this crew is 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.
Author Notes
Blake Crouch is a bestselling novelist and screenwriter. He is the author of the novel, Dark Matter, for which he is writing the screenplay for Sony Pictures. His bestselling Wayward Pines trilogy was adapted into a television series for FOX in 2015. With Chad Hodge, Crouch also created Good Behavior, the TNT television show starring Michelle Dockery based on his Letty Dobesh novellas. He has written more than a dozen novels that have been translated into over thirty languages and his short fiction has appeared in several publications including Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
At the start of this bloated thriller from Crouch (Desert Places), Abigail Foster, a Manhattan freelance journalist, reluctantly agrees to accompany her father, Lawrence Kendall-who abandoned her as a child-and paranormal photographers Emmett and June Tozer, to the remote remains of Abandon, Colo. The inhabitants of Abandon all vanished without a trace on Christmas Day 1893, and Abigail thinks she'll write an article on the Tozers and the ghost town's history. The present-day hikers face a number of obstacles, starting with an unexpected blizzard and including the arrival of ex-Marines intent on finding millions of dollars worth of gold supposedly stashed somewhere in Abandon. Despite the book's intriguing premise, the action soon devolves into a Rambo-style melee, with enough blood and guts to put off weak stomachs. By the time Abandon's fate is revealed in the overly drawn-out climax, few readers will care. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Whether it's 1893 or 2009, the town of Abandon, Colo., is a very nasty place to be. When a novel opens with a little girl blowing away a mule skinner with a revolver, readers can safely expect more dirty work to come. And they get it in spades from Crouch (Locked Doors, 2005, etc.), who sets up two alternating, equally unsavory plotlines. In 2009, historian Lawrence Kendall takes along his journalist daughter Abigail Foster on an expedition to the Colorado ghost town whose inhabitants all vanished without a trace in December 1893. In those days, we see in the second narrative, Abandon is in decline, the nearby mine tapped out, though there are still plenty of prostitutes and gunslingers aroundand local bigwig Bart Packer has 91 gold bars he found next to a headless Spanish skeleton stashed away in his fancy house. That conquistador gold will cause no end of trouble, as 19th-century desperados kill Packer and hide the gold in the mine, and 21st-century Iraq veterans brutalize Lawrence's party in an effort to make the historian tell them where the gold is located. People are shot at point-blank range, knives are brandished, gruesome wounds inflicted, and it all gets fairly ridiculous after a while. One or two gotchas will make you jump: the bad guy you thought was dead who comes from behind with a dagger; the sheriff you thought would help who turns out to be one of Them. When a crazy preacher locking the entire Abandon population in the mine to starve is followed by the story of the woman whose husband cut out her tongue with a razor, or a post-traumatic, stressed-out Iraq veteran gets shot as he threatens for the umpteenth time to carve up Abigail in unspeakable ways, readers are likely to stop flinching and start laughing. Definitely not for the squeamishor skeptical. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
On Christmas Day 1893, the tiny, remote gold-mining town of Abandon, Colorado, ceased to be. No trace of the population was ever found. More than a century later, a historian, a journalist, and two paranormal investigators trek into the ghost town with varying purposes. Crouch tells his tale in alternating chapters, but the reader ultimately learns that the story of both the residents and the latter-day visitors is one of gold, greed, and murder and a pinch of madness. Abandon is an ambitious and largely effective suspense novel. The portrayal of life in Abandon is rich with details of brutal hardship, suffering, and a gnawing sense of creepiness. The modern investigators are tried by cold, a blizzard, avalanche dangers, rotted buildings that may collapse at any moment, and the eeriness of the derelict town. But Crouch has two sets of characters, and nearly all have a backstory. Some work; some are strained. Even so, the palpable suspense just keeps building, and many thriller fans especially those who like a touch of horror will lose sleep to find out how it all ends.--Gaughan, Thomas Copyright 2009 Booklist
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter One A bigail Foster stared through the windshield at the expired parking meter. Her fingers strangled the steering wheel, knuckles blanching, hands beginning to cramp. This had all seemed like such a good idea a month ago back in New York when she'd pitched the article to Margot, her editor at Great Outdoors. Now, on the verge of seeing him for the first time in twenty-six years, she realized she'd done herself the disservice of glossing over this moment and the fact that she'd have to walk into that building and face him. Her watch showed five minutes to seven, which meant it was five to five, mountain time. She'd sat in this parking space for twenty minutes, and he was probably about to leave, thinking she'd decided not to come. The hostess showed her toward the back of the brewpub, which at five in the afternoon stood mostly empty. Peanut shells littered the floor, crunching beneath the heels of her black pumps, and the reek of brewing beer infused the air with a yeasty sourness. The hostess held the back door open and motioned to the only occupied table on the patio. Abigail stepped outside, smoothed the Cavalli skirt she'd paid way too much for last year in Milan. The doubt resurfaced. She shouldn't have come. No story was worth this. He sat alone with his back to her at a west-facing table, with the town of Durango, Colorado, spread out before him in its high valley, specked with the icy yellows of cottonwood and aspen, enclosed by pine-wooded hills and bare shale hills and, farther back, the spruce forests and jagged peaks of the San Juans. The sound of the patio door banging shut caught his attention. He looked over his shoulder, and at the sight of her, slid his chair back from the table and stood--tall, sturdy, wavy silver hair, dark blues, and dressed like something out of Backpacker magazine--plaid Patagonia button-up shirt tucked into a comfortable pair of jeans, Livestrong bracelet, Teva sandals. She felt that knot constricting in her stomach again, noticed his left hand trembling. He seized the chair he'd been sitting in to steady it. "Hi, Lawrence." She knew he was fifty-two, but he'd aged even better than his photo on the history department's Web site indicated. No handshake, no hug, just five seconds of what Abigail ranked as the most excruciating eye contact she'd ever held. Easing down into a chair, she counted three empty pints on the table, wished she'd had the benefit of alcohol to steel herself for this meeting. She rifled through her purse, found her sunglasses. It was Halloween, and though the air carried a chill, at this elevation the intensity of direct sunlight made it pleasant to sit outdoors. "I'm glad you came," Lawrence said. A waiter costumed as a hula dancer approached the table. "Want a beer, Abigail?" "Sure." "They have a bunch of different--" "I don't care. Something light." He said to the waiter, "Bring her a Rock Hopped Pale." "Right on." The whistle of a steam-powered locomotive blew somewhere up the valley. Abigail saw the plume of smoke in the distance, heard the chugging palpitations of the valve gears as the train steamed south through the heart of town. "I don't have any backpacking gear," she said. "Scott will outfit you." "Who's Scott?" "Our guide." The silence, uncomfortable as it came, crawled under her skin. "Pretty town you have here." She couldn't help thinking this didn't feel anything like she'd imagined it would. Having run countless versions of this moment through her head, they'd all carried more gravitas. She would scream at him. She'd hit him. They'd break down and cry together. He'd apologize. She'd accept. She wouldn't. Now she understood none of that would happen. They were just two people sharing a table, trying to limp through the awkwardness. "I'm curious," she said. "All this time, and now you contact me." "I've followed your journalism career, subscribe to all the magazines you regularly contribute to, and I thought this . . . expedition . . . might be good fodder for your--" "But you haven't been interested in helping me since I was four years old." Lawrence slugged back the rest of his dark beer, stared at the mountains, wiped the foam from his beard. Abigail said, "That came out more angry than--" "No, it's fine. You've got standing to be as angry as you want." "I'm not, though." The patio door opened and the waiter returned with Abigail's pint and another round for Lawrence. When he'd left, she raised her glass. "Lawrence," she said, "here's to our past. Fuck it." He grinned. "That easy, huh?" "We can pretend." They clinked pints and Abigail sipped her golden beer. "So why'd you come?" Lawrence asked. "To be honest, I never expected a response to that E-mail." "Funny, I was just sitting out in the car, building the nerve to walk in here, and trying to answer that question for myself." The sun ducked behind the mountains and Abigail shivered, the rocky slopes and snowfields blushing with alpenglow. Excerpted from ABANDON by BLAKE CROUCH Copyright (c) 2009 by Blake Crouch Published in July 2009 by St. Martin's Press All rights reserved. This work is protected under copyright laws and reproduction is strictly prohibited. Permission to reproduce the material in any manner or medium must be secured from the Publisher. Excerpted from Abandon by Blake Crouch All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.