For my trilogy, The Crossings Trilogy (Crossing into the Mystic, Edging through the Darkness, and Escaping from the Abyss), I chose the haunting beauty of the northern tier of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in West Virginia … and, in particular, a secluded and crypt-like hillside cut off from the world by the canyons and gorges of the Appalachian Mountains and the churning Potomac River.
On that hill stands “Crossings,” a deserted Civil War-era estate that harbors mysteries as heinous as the historic war that unfolded around it so many years ago. Since that War, Crossings mysteriously has kept the locals at bay as it awaits the perfect visitor to set its disturbing—and disturbingly dead—inhabitant free.
Enter my protagonist, Grace MacKenna, a 16-year-old orphan, impatient with people and angry at God, but wise beyond her years due to the deaths of her entire family in an extraordinary accident three years earlier. To stay at Crossings—her only option outside of living with a sometimes-vicious aunt in Boston—Grace must risk immersing herself into the lives of the souls she encounters in order to put her family’s deaths to rest.
When a local pastor suggests that her “ghosts” may be angels and demons in disguise, Grace finds herself questioning her own beliefs about what she is encountering.
Grace clings to life as she is pulled even deeper into an empty existence by Crossings, a dead once-dashing soldier, a handsome young local man, and hence even her own heart.
Along the way, Grace learns that history is more than trite stories about people, that there are many types of lies, that death is only the beginning of a whole new series of gruesome or blissful phenomena (all depending upon the choices that one made), and that forbidden love can make demands that may cause her to teeter between life and death. The collective theme, however, is “as ye sow, so shall ye reap,” as Grace learns that our choices dictate our life, our future, and particularly our eternity.
Where, but in these beautiful, haunting mountains, could such a suspenseful romance take place!?!?
Find out more about author, DL Koontz here.
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