Southeastern Ohio: Inspiration for the Luce Hansen Thriller Series
If you’ve never visited southeastern Ohio, you are missing out. Nestled along the edge of the Appalachian Mountains, it’s rolling hills and thick forest offer the perfect Americana backdrop, not to mention some of the most amazing sunrises and sunsets. I’ll admit that I’m partial to the area; my mother’s family has resided there and farmed its land for generations. As a kid, I spent my holidays from school playing in the expansive forest and exploring the rocky hiking trails around the lake at Salt Fork State Park.
There’s a flip side to this bucolic version of southeastern Ohio, though, a hardscrabble ruggedness willing to battle for its very existence. It’s a place that can go from peaceful to dangerous in a matter of minutes, just one of the attributes of the land that has drawn a few serial killers to use this region to hunt humans and then leave the bodies behind in the natural elements. It’s that same dichotomy, an opposite of extremes sitting side by side, that fascinates me. It’s why I chose this area of the Midwest to serve as the fictional setting for all three of my books in the Luce Hansen Thriller Series.
Southeastern Ohio was originally thought of as a place of opportunity because the Ohio River offered a port for manufacturing. As the country moved toward other means of transportation for materials and manufacturing moved to larger cities, the region remained rich in farmland but little else. While the economy struggled and residents fought to keep their land and homes, oil companies eventually moved into the area and deemed the land valuable for fracking.
These companies promised the world, though most only offered a one-time payment for endless access to an owners’ land for drilling. Hotels went up, restaurants and businesses flourished as money flowed into the local economy. But so many of those promises have left behind empty hotel rooms, residents still struggling for a steady income, and the land stripped of its nutrients.
Yet there is an inherent wild beauty in southeastern Ohio, something my protagonist, Special Agent Luce Hansen, thrives on. As the co-director of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, Luce specializes in not only profiling serial killers, but also stopping them. Raised in the region where her father was once the chief of police, Luce is able to use her intimate knowledge of the landscape, its weather, and its people to help solve her cases.
In Crossed (2015), the limestone caverns that pocked rocky hills of a quarry served as the ultimate showdown between Luce Hansen and a serial killer who had been involved with the murders of young women in the queer community. The deaths in Willow’s Ridge over a decade caused Hansen to question whether or not an ex-gay ministry she had been a part of in her youth could be involved in the murders.
As Hansen maneuvers inside this rural and conservative town, she cannot help but to remember her first love, Marci Tucker, at every turn. It had been Hansen who found Marci’s body hidden inside one of the caves, the first murder in a string of killings over time that not only involved Luce professionally but also personally.
Forsaken Trust (2017) takes place in Wallace Lake where two rivers converge into a lake. It’s a recreational area used for boating and summer fun. Every year, as the long months turn cold, the tourists disappear and it’s up to the “townies” to keep their own economy alive. It is in this sleepy town where Hansen tracks a serial killer who is targeting women down on their luck and who have suffered from addiction issues at some point in their lives. When Hansen determines the killer must be someone very close to the area, possibly even a “townie,” she learns just how perfect the hidden and remote areas of Wallace Lake are for hiding and transporting drugs as well as humans.
It is Deadeye (July 2019), though, where the land of southeastern Ohio becomes so prominent to the story, it becomes its own character. After the prison break of a dangerous serial sniper who kills for sport, Hansen and her team head to Simmons County where it’s relatively easy to disappear into the lush landscape. To complicate matters, it is the start of deer gun hunting season and recreational hunters have descended on the area. New victims emerge and their murders fit the pattern: seemingly chosen at random, they don’t even realize they are in danger when they hike, jog, and hunt in the surrounding forest. Terror eats at the residents of Simmons County—where is this escaped serial killer and who has he targeted next? After all, if safety can’t be found in your own backyard, where can you find it?
A few years ago, I saw photographs of the approximate location where one of southeastern Ohio’s serial killers left his dead. The area is the meaning of the word remote, and there aren’t any neighbors for miles. It’s peaceful place, silent except for the sounds of the wild nature that surrounds it.
The photographs haunted me. I was struck by the thought that if I hadn’t known about the violence that occurred in that location, I never would have guessed. If you’d shown me the photos under any other circumstances, I might have concluded it was a perfectly quiet place for a family cemetery. But, of course, there is no forgetting about the violence that happened there. It’s a dichotomy so powerful and vivid that the image hasn’t left my mind—such cruelty in the midst of beauty.
It’s my sincere hope that the real victims of serial killers in southeastern Ohio, as well as the characters in my books, have been saved from a final vision of the landscape’s cruelty when they meet their fate. I hope they witnessed the flip side of that dichotomy—a peaceful place to rest, if only for a while, standing witness to some of the most amazing sunrises and sunsets.
—
Meredith Doench teaches writing at the University of Dayton in Ohio. Her fiction and nonfiction has appeared in literary journals such as Hayden’s Ferry Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and Gertrude. She served as one of the fiction editors at Camera Obscura: Journal of Literature and Photography and is the author of the Luce Hansen thriller series from Bold Strokes Books. Deadeye, her third novel, releases July 1, 2019.
Pre-order the novel here: https://www.boldstrokesbooks.com/books/deadeye-by-meredith-doench-2951-b
facebook.com/meredithdoenchauthor
Twitter @MeredithDoench
About DEADEYE
Special Agent Luce Hansen’s Thanksgiving vacation with her new lover, forensic pathologist Harper Bennett, is cut short when she’s tasked to recapture Deadeye, a vicious serial predator who has escaped custody. The timing couldn’t be worse, especially when Bennett seems to be struggling with the realities of Hansen’s work and questioning whether she’s willing to risk building a life with a woman who puts work first, even when the job puts her in the line of fire.
Hansen can’t put aside the chase even with her relationship on shaky ground when, on the anniversary of Deadeye’s first kill, two brothers are shot while jogging along a quiet country road. Before Deadeye can claim another victim, Hansen and her team must track a killer who has proven to be an expert at hiding in plain sight. The stakes, both professional and personal, get even higher when Hansen is cut off from her team in rural Ohio and must fight for her very survive. As Bennett frantically searches for clues to Hansen’s disappearance, Deadeye’s hunt draws ever closer to home.
Category: On Writing
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
