On Parson's Creek

A new teenager in a small, Oregon logging town, Jack Taylor's bored with school and living in his own head. Walking in the forest, he finds dark mysteries in an old-growth cedar grove near his new home. He finds out that the story handed down several generations doesn't really tell the tale completely, nor do tales of lurking giants in the trees, an Indian curse, or the abandoned locomotive deep in the woods. As he asks questions of his teachers and local families, he finds himself pushed more and more into a corner from which there is only one way out. With the reluctant help of a local historian, his Physics teacher, a school friend and an ancient logger almost as old as the trees, he begins to put the clues together. The story unravels a community conspiring to hide the entire truth from the world. But, is that wrong? Maybe the world doesn't need to know. Recommended for older teens through adults who haven't forgotten the teenager inside.