THE PINE BARRENS STRATAGEM

In Ann Fessler’s excellent nonfiction book, The Girls Who Went Away, unwed, pregnant women in the days before Roe v. Wade were sent to “mom farms” run by the Catholic Church. Once they gave birth, the babies were given up for adoption and the mothers returned home under a cloud of unspoken shame. Author Ken Harris uses this dark piece of American history to breath new life into the well-trod, down-and-out private detective genre in THE PINE BARRENS STRATAGEM. In Harris’ novel, the “girls who went away” never make it back home because they are murdered and tossed in the remote Pine Barrens, a forested area in southern New Jersey that is home to the Jersey Devil and countless other bits of dark folklore.