The Lostcreek Legacy [Paperback]

Evelyn Swift's novel The Lostcreek Legacy (2008 Umbach Publishing edition) was inspired by a real incident in Gold Country but is otherwise entirely fictional. While it is mainstream, contemporary fiction, the novel includes elements of mystery (a death under suspicious circumstances), touches of romance, local color, and effective dialog and description. Evelyn has done a remarkable job of keying on an incident in a small town (reported briefly in newspaper articles), using it as the basis of the conflict embodied in the novel, and building characters and details of location in a gripping story.

In a nutshell, key character Mike Doyle reopens a long-abandoned gold mine, in pursuit of wealth. He inadvertently interrupts the nearby town's water supply (a supply that took its route through the mine, thanks to a generations-old channel to town), triggering irreversible events and setting neighbor against neighbor. Doyle is determined to make a go of the enterprise, and the townspeople are just as determined to hold on to their legacy, the now-damaged water supply. The underlying incident really happened, but Evelyn Swift, an experienced novelist, has applied imagination and familiarity with the region to build out "what might have been." Readers in the greater Gold Country region will enjoy the story on account of its historic setting and implications, as well as for its sparkling writing, while readers in other areas will find The Lostcreek Legacy to be an armchair adventure in a colorful part of California.

I am the publisher of this book, and consider myself fortunate to have met Evelyn Swift by way of the Sacramento Branch of the California Writer's Club and to have had the opportunity to bring this fine novel to an audience. Evelyn's latest book, the splendid fantasy novel Wyla the Witch, is now also available on Amazon.