Winterkill
by
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Chapter One The trouble with life is it can kill you. Just ask anyone in Sitwell, they’ll tell you. All you need to do is give it half a chance...turn your back, let your guard down. Hell, they could even prove it if they had to. Anyone on the long list of dead fools could help make the point. Few people needed more convincing than that. Maybe that was why the bell in the church tower rang every half-hour. Maybe it reassured them, reminded the people of this small New England town that they weren’t dead yet. Forty-eight times each day they were reminded, taking what comfort they could from the warbling peal that echoed across the valley and broke against the hard granite walls of the mountains. The huge clock set the rhythm of their lives, and like condemned men watching the executioner’s clock, they clung to its mechanical beat as if it were the beat of life itself. Across the street at the general store, Mrs. Dumont had run into Mrs. Malloy, or Mrs. Becker was talking to Mrs. Sykes, and somewhere amidst the chatter and painted smiles jabbed the sound of Mr. Friehoff and his staff of one punching the keys of the brass register, mindlessly, with a nerve-rattling regularity. The other customers nodded politely to each other, taking care to observe proper social distances as they moved through the convoluted aisles reaching for boxes of Cheerios and jars of Hellmann’s. Outside, an occasional car passed through town, and the hound at the Texaco station would challenge the driver not to run him over as he raced him out of his territory...unless it was hot, in which case these games were suspended, usually by mutual agreement, just more trouble than it was worth. Down the street in front of his hardware store, old Mr. Taylor rocked in his chair, like a pendulum, and the floorboards under him creaked and moaned, ticking away the seconds...movements that were too fine for the enormous hands of the great clock to negotiate. It was a slow life these people led, a controlled life, lived that way intentionally so it could all last longer, as if by stretching out the minutes and the hours and the days they could perhaps come out ahead in the end. But then, despite their best efforts, there were always the things that didn’t fit in with the daily rhythms of life, the things that got away from them, the ones that couldn’t be reined in, and for a few days after you’d hear a lot of "Well, these things happen" and "It’s not for us to understand." Like the night in 1938 when Nat Cooke went mad, rode through town on his prize sow Sally waving his rifle and three-cornered hat and shouting that the British were coming. The fool shot out every window on Main Street and killed Mrs. Parson’s cat before finally falling into the river and drowning, sow and all. Or like 1945, when Marla Cranshaw’s apple orchard yielded half a treeful of blue apples. There was an awful lot of head scratching down at the cider mill after that. And then there was the 1948 clapper caper, in which a disaffected newcomer had it with what he called the bells from hell, and for three anxiety-filled days those bells didn’t ring, not until the clapper was replaced. These episodes aside, there was the indisputable fact that people disappeared a lot. Just sort of dropped out of sight. Permanently.
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About the Book
Running from the past, hiding a secret–that's what Ben Dalton has been doing for the last ten years. But he's about to crash headlong into an immutable fact: No matter how hard he runs, his past is going to catch up with him. And when his secret gets out, it’s going to destroy him. Ben’s secret may seem relatively harmless; he was a Communist in New York during the 1940s. But it's 1957, the Cold War is on, and this is small-town America. To make matters worse, Ben is no longer a Communist and can't defend what he once believed. Friends desert him, and he finds himself alone, scared, and without purpose in life. By moving to the small town of Sitwell, New Hampshire, he hopes to make a new start. But things are never that simple, and Ben encounters another of those immutable truths: He can't walk away from his past without leaving an essential part of himself with it. As word slowly leaks out about his past, he becomes trapped in a web of lethargy and denial. But denial, it turns out, is useless. Once the secret is out, Ben and his family become the targets of an escalating series of attacks that snowball over the years into blackmail, attempted rape, arson, and, ultimately, death. Between assaults on himself and his family, Ben tries to get on with his life, but he's defeated at every turn and sinks into a profound, possibly deadly, inertia. His wife Kate, whose instinct is always to try to fix things that have gone wrong, spends her life agonizing over Ben and trying to protect him. And while no one is paying attention, their daughter Nicky crosses the threshold into adolescence. All attempts to rein her in are too little and too late, and her dawning adolescent rebellion explodes into full-blown insurrection. In the end, two people are dead, three teenagers are missing, and the fine stitching that holds the family and the town together begins to unravel.
About the Author
Karen Wunderman spent her childhood in a suburb of New York and her adolescence in Manhattan. But those were just places to live, and it was the winter vacations and summers spent in New England, particularly New Hampshire, that gave her a life-long connection to open spaces and wild places. After receiving a B.A. in history and an M.A. and M.Ed. in childhood education, Ms. Wunderman held a few unusual teaching jobs and then left the profession to pursue a career in educational publishing. She is the author and contributing author of many textbooks and other educational materials. When not writing for love or for money, she spends her time tending her gardens in Cranbury, New Jersey, where she lives with her husband, two children, and an assortment of four-legged creatures. She is also an ardent photo hobbyist. While New Jersey is her home, her heart resides in the lakes and mountains of New Hampshire, which she runs to every chance she gets.