Copperhead Road

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As summer dies, the first boy is found in a shallow grave. More will follow. His hometown has a serial child killer in its midst…

At seventeen, John Ray has silently survived years of molestation at the hands of a respected coach and mentor. When younger boys start disappearing, found sexually abused and murdered in the same woods where he was once victimized, John must confront not only his own past but an interwoven set of characters, some evil, some desperate and some both, who share his memories in one way or another.

What John must do, who he must open up to, and the corpses he must unearth—literally and figuratively in order to stop the madness around him—is what drives this intense story to its heart-pounding conclusion.

In addition to its pace and rich character development, Copperhead Road features an eerie and remarkable sense of place; its setting is the Northern Virginia suburbs of the mid 1980’s, pre-cell phone and pre-Internet, and will carry any reader back to a simpler but sometimes darker recent past.

Mystery & Thriller / Fiction / Legal / Crime

Excerpt

This is the story of that tribulation, the stones we overturned, the corpses we unearthed, the silence we finally broke, and the people we left behind.

“Be careful gettin’ home,” Cotler said to us. “There’s still a monster out there someplace.” I didn’t give the admonition much thought until Steve dropped me off at the end of my block. It was only when his taillights disappeared around the corner, leaving me alone in the morning darkness, that it came floating back … and with an old, familiar face attached. A monster, I thought, gazing up at the bland, white moon. A monster.

A child lost in the woods in August was a better situation than one lost in February, but the warm weather was little consolation. There had been at least three serious thunderstorms in the days since he’d disappeared, not to mention eight friendless nights. No matter what kind of spin you put on that, it spelled out something very ugly.

Praise for Copperhead Road

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Don't miss this book!

Don't miss this book! It's hard to believe that I was lucky enough to find another outstanding book this year for such a bargain price. After I read "My Name Is River Blue," I didn't think I would find so much book for the money again, but "Copperhead Road" is that book. I like books with many rich characters, and subplots woven masterfully throughout and tightly connected to the main story. If you decide to buy this book, set aside some uninterrupted time because you won't put it down for long.
—Devon J.

Captures the potential terror faced by teenagers

Not since Stephen King’s “It,” can I remember a book that so well captured the potential terror faced by teenagers about to enter the “real world.” But “It” involved an other-worldly monster drawn from King’s rich imagination. There are monsters, too, in “Copperhead Road,” but these monsters all have human faces. They interact freely with their neighbors in the community and conceal their depraved acts behind a facade of normalcy and friendliness. As his book makes crystal clear, Roger Canaff is all too familiar with this kind of all-consuming, penetrative, evil. But to his credit, his novel demonstrates that love is stronger than hate, and that friendship sometimes, not always, creates bonds stronger than those forged by trauma. This is by no means inevitable, but it is always possible. Roger Canaff teaches that this--the elevation of love over hate--must be the goal of all of us who have been affected, directly or indirectly, repeatedly or just once, by the insidious horror of childhood sexual abuse. It is far easier said than done. But it is well worth the effort.
— K. Mulhearn

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Dedications

To Gregg and Chris, who believed. To Bob and Clem, the Cotler and Steve who saved me, and to the still unknown millions of children who are victims of sexual abuse worldwide, still suffering in silence. This story is for you.

Additional Details

ISBN: 978-1-7340973-9-9 (e-book)

ISBN: 978-1-7345724-0-7 (paperback)

FORMATS: ebook, paperback

Brooklyn Writers Press