Book Review: The White Cascade by Gary Krist

 Gary Krist couples his first attempt at non-fiction with great storytelling to recount the gripping incident known as the Wellington Disaster in The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche.

In 1910 the driving force of rolling snow and wreckage demolishes two snowbound trains. An estimated death toll of 96 passengers and crew litter the area with bodies. Buried in snow at the top of the Cascade Mountains, surviving passengers first passed the time by writing letters to friends and loved ones, then complaining and taking care of the children. Some of the lucky passengers slid to the safety of the next station.

After a freak thunderstorm in the early morning hours of the sixth day, a dislodged and massive swath of hard-packed snow and ice slam into the stranded trains, leaving behind a mess of dead and mangled steel and wood.Faint cries for help and excruciating rescues make this a non-fiction story of mammoth proportions.

The vivid picture Krist paints of the scene makes you feel like you’re there in the cold, stacking the bodies for identification with the rest of the workers.All in all this was a good read. The White Cascade is packed full of informative descriptions of the era, which I like in a book of this caliber. The story drags a bit at the front but quickly picks up. The history and descriptions of what it was like to work on the Great Northern rail makes this a railroad gem any person interested in this type of memorabilia and area of interest will want to get for their collection.

Book Review: Hunters of the Dark Sea by Mel Odom

 Mel Odom weaves an intricate tale in his historical horror and sci-fi adventure in Hunters of the Dark Sea. The main story opens in 1813. The young United States is at war with Great Britain and the high seas are crawling with British war-ships, privateers, cutthroat pirates and a visitor from not of this world.

Twenty-six year old Ethan Swain is first mate of the whaling ship Reliant. He and the crew have been at sea for two years and the ships holds are half full with the precious cargo of whale oil. Ethan has a dark past he must hide in order to keep his life intact. Keeping his past a secrete and being torn between the ships captain and the crew which is on the verge of a mutiny is only a small part of the turmoil he must juggle.


On board the research ship Brown-Eyed Sue is Professor Bullock and his intelligent and artistic daughter Katherine. They have been dispatched by the President of the United Sates to investigate reports of a sea monster named Death-in-the-water by the natives of Easter Island. Bullock soon learns the beginning of the reports coincide with a falling star hitting the water 16 years back. While anchored off the coast of Easter Island a dying man washes ashore with his painful and swollen skin practically blistering off the bone. A futile attempt by Bullock at saving the mans life renders an unknown venom the monster uses to kill its prey.


Vengeful Jonah McAfee, part of Ethan Swain’s dark past, is captain of the pirate ship Sunfisher. McAfee in pursuit of Ethan for revenge, catches wind of the monster and focuses his efforts on finding the monster.Hunters of the Dark Sea ends with Ethan battling McAfee, a British war ship, and the monster in a dynamite finish.


This is one of my favorite books of all time. Odom brings the characters to life in a way comparable to King. I also enjoyed the life-like setting of the high seas and the day-to-day life in my opinion was probably close to the real thing for the whalers of that time period. It’s quite obvious Mel Odom did his research for this book.

Book Review: Carved in Bone by Jefferson Bass

Carved in Bone, the remarkable break-out novel by Jefferson Bass, is forensic fiction at its best. "Jefferson Bass" is the writing team of Dr. Bill Bass, world-renowned forensic anthropologist, and Jon Jefferson, veteran writer/film maker. These two entangle the reader in a story about skeletons, literally and figuratively, from the very first page.

Page one introduces the “body farm” where Dr. Bill Brockton is pushing a knife through the back of one of his male cadavers for a murder case he’s working on. The body farm is a three-acre patch of ground located near the University of Tennessee, used for forensic science; it houses dozens of bodies in different state of decomposition.

A visiting Deputy from Cook County interrupts Dr. Brocton in the middle of his experiment with an interesting case: a mummified corpse of a young woman dead for 30 years has been discovered in a cave in the Appalachian Mountains.

Brockton’s investigation threatens to kick open the door of Cook County family skeleton closets and he finds himself on the wrong end of a gun more than once. Dealing with the death of his wife, Brockton is vigilant in solving the mystery of the dead woman.

This tale is thick with the typical forensic questions and has amazing detail when it comes to the subject of anthropology - not for the weak-stomached or the squeamish.

Carved in Bone has an array of compelling characters ranging from chicken-fighting FBI agents to attractive anthropology assistants and on to towering redneck sidekicks. The characters, setting and dialogue are all first-rate and compete with the best writers of today.

The book also includes an intriguing “Q & A” with Dr. Bill Bass, covering some of the “ins and outs” in the field of anthropology.

Next out for this series is Flesh and Bone.