Bad Axe County

Why? “…you seem like a normal, nice person!“

I never exactly planned to write a book like Bad Axe County, certainly not one as harrowing and dark and that includes such frightening twists and despicable characters. After a recent event, I had a woman approach me to say, with some astonishment, “I expected you to be, like, this totally creepy guy. I mean . . . how do you even know this stuff? But you seem like a normal, nice person!”

I laughed uncomfortably.

I was worried about this. My previous five novels are significantly less taxing on the soul, both mine and the reader’s. I’ve never heard about my other books what I often hear about Bad Axe County: “I wanted to stop reading, but I couldn’t . . .”

I can relate. I wanted to stop writing, but I couldn’t.

What happened is this. I had developed Interim Sheriff Heidi Kick, the recovering Dairy Queen, and I had developed the region, fictional Bad Axe County in southwestern Wisconsin, but I was struggling with the story until I came upon an academic study of sex trafficking in rural midwestern communities. Basically what the study said is that when asked about sex trafficking, rural law enforcement leaders (virtually all men) said the problem did not exist in their jurisdictions. When researchers posed the same questions to workers in rural social services and women’s shelters (virtually all women), they heard the opposite: sex trafficking was a health crisis of epidemic proportions.

So now I knew what my story was about: a new female leader, Heidi Kick, unwelcome to some in her community, recognizes and deals with a crime that has been invisible and ignored until she came along.

Then I began my research into sex trafficking, and things got real in a hurry. The terrible deeds that men do to Pepper Greengrass are true to life and quite common, I’m sorry to say. I haven’t made anything up – just adapted actual experiences and events for fictional purposes. I had to stick my nose into an ugly and violent world, look at disturbing and disgusting photographs, read gut-wrenching personal narratives, and grapple with the darkness and its implications for me, my story, and my readers. How could I simultaneously provide entertainment – what readers want – while vividly and faithfully presenting the truth – which victims like Pepper deserve?

I wanted to stop reading, but I couldn’t . . . I wanted to stop writing, but I couldn’t.

I hope, in the end, for both the writer and the reader, the struggle was worth it.

Thanks for reading!