Why a Booktrail?
2000s: Welcome to the eerie town of Prosperous, Maine USA. You’ll never forget your visit here. That’s if you get out alive…
The Wolf in Winter
What you need to know before your trail
The people of the small town of Prosperous, Maine has always looked after its own. Whilst the towns around it have suffered hardship or problems of some sort, Prosperous has thrived. The people here play cards at night, happy in the knowledge that their live is protected, happy and safe. Outsiders are not welcome.
AT the heart of he town is an old church, the ruins of which still remain. There is a dark tale attached to this place, the stones relics of the past in more ways than one.
Private investigator Charlie Parker comes to the town in search of answers – a homeless man searching for his missing daughter has been found dead and his daughter is nowhere to be found.
There is something strange going on here and the wolves in the woods are howling..
Travel Guide
Whilst Prosperous is fictional, each of the Parker books is set, to a greater or lesser extent, in Maine. Charlie Parker’s home is in Scarborough, just south of the larger city of Portland, which is the center of Maine’s cultural and social life.
Lock your doors and batten down the hatches for you won’t want the winds and dark atmosphere of Prosperous Maine to get inside your house. This is a dark, dark , atmospheric and bleak town although its name would suggest otherwise.
Charlie Parker comes into this country searching for a missing woman and investigating the death of a homeless man, but in a town which not only buries its secrets but is willing to kill to keep them buried, he struggles to shed a light on the town’s darkness –
“…giving Prosperous a reputation as a town blessed by the Lord, even if its inhabitants declined to allow others to share in their perceived good fortune divinely ordained”
The church – The Congregation of Adam Before Eve & Eve Before Adam – at its centre has been built brick by brick from stone from Durham and Newcastle in England – the strange carvings on the wall hiding a secret or two –
“The names of the towns first settlers still resounded around Prosperous in a way that few other such settlements could boat. Most had roots back in Durham and Northumberland in the northeast of England , for that was where Prosperous’s first settlers had come from”
Who lives in this town and who gets to leave? Who is welcome and who is not? The elders of the village have it all contained and planned down to the smallest detail. So when a girl is found running bloodied in the woods, and an outside investigator comes calling, there are some dangers which must be dealt with and fast.
The villagers here, all from the local police chief Lucas Morland and Paster Warraner have something to hide. Town leader Hayley Conyer has certainly got skeletons in her cupboard.
And the wolves on the moutain side are howling..
Where Next?
