Shelterwood

A Novel

Lisa Wingate

This is a mashup of historical fiction, adventure tale, and crime story set in the Winding Stair Mountains in eastern Oklahoma — now the site of the Ouachita National Forest and Horsethief Springs Trail.

Horsethief Springs Trail is an 11-mile loop hiking trail that winds through the trees and crosses streams along the face of Winding Stair Mountain. Parts of the trail follow logging roads from the 1920s, and in the 1800s, it was the route used by horse thieves to escape with their spoils.

All of that wilderness is a character in this page-turning story with dual timelines — 1990 and 1909 — two remarkable heroines and more suspense than you might expect in a historical novel.

In the modern timeline, our heroine is Valerie. She’s a Law Enforcement Ranger, just arrived for duty at the Horsethief Trail National Park. She’s in a rough patch: Her husband has recently died, and she and her young son are eager for a fresh start. But she’s been dropped into the thick of it at her new job. A local teenager has gone missing from one of the hiking trails. There’s tension in the community between the local Choctaw tribe and the newly designated national park. And the remains of three young girls have been found in a cave deep in the forest.

Valerie’s new boss is more concerned with politics than the truth and refuses to investigate the girls’ case. But she can’t stop thinking about the tragedy that likely befell the children. She decides to embark on her own secret, unofficial investigation, and she forms an unlikely alliance with a Choctaw tribal police officer along the way.

This part of the story is a brisk police procedural with compelling red herrings, good character development, and Valerie’s fish-out-of-water perspective.

In the 1909 thread, 11-year-old Olive tells her story. It’s a combination of big adventure and heart-breaking adversity. After the death of her father, her mom climbed into a whiskey bottle and a new bed, trapping Olive in fear of her abusive stepfather. When she realizes that she and her foster sister will never be safe, the girls pack a bag with supplies and go on the run. Now they’re two little girls all alone in the wilderness, their evil stepfather is after them, and he’s got the law on his side.

As they must, the two timelines eventually intersect with each other. Dark secrets are revealed, and, as much as they can be, old ghosts are laid to rest.

Along the way to learning what happens to our fictional friends, there’s a lot of real-world history — about Oklahoma’s new statehood, the appalling lack of regulation around child labor, the theft of Native American lands. It gets pretty dark, but when the remarkable Kate Barnard makes an appearance, hope does, too. Barnard was the first woman in America elected to state public office. She won by the widest majority of any candidate on the ballot — at a time when women couldn’t vote. She was a fierce champion of the trod upon and advocated for child labor laws.

Though half of the story takes place 100 years ago, the issues faced by the female characters haven’t changed much. May we all show the fortitude of Kate Barnard, Olive, and Valerie.

I am in the backwoods of southeastern Oklahoma, where after a rain, the morning shadows linger long and deep, and the mountains exhale mist so thick it seems to have weight. The countryside exudes the eerie, forgotten feel of a place where a woman and a seven-year-old boy could simply vanish and no one would ever know… The morning air is thicker, greener, and warmer than I’m accustomed to in May. It smells of summer. Summer, and earth, and damp stone, and shortleaf pines. — Lisa Wingate

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