Books are silent until you read them! I recently found a little gem hidden on one of our library shelves. “The River at Night” is the debut novel by Erica Ferencik written back in 2017. It is a tale of survival under the worst conditions. I couldn't put it down. The story charts the journey of four friends, each seeking to get away from having to deal with major life changes in their personal lives. They sign up for a rafting trip in Northern Maine. After a freak accident capsizes their raft the women are left stranded with no mode of transportation or supplies. They will not only struggle to survive the challenges of the Maine Woods but will soon fight to survive a human one.

The author, Erica Ferencik, is a graduate of the MFA program in Creative Writing at Boston Univ. She is an award winner and a fan of Oprah's book list. Her novels take you to some of the most remote places on earth. Her protagonists are women who are brave not only in facing internal struggles but who will be met with extreme environmental challenges.

Erica says “My passion is to create (unputdownable) novels set in some of the most inhospitable regions on earth, places most of us don't get a chance to experience in person, in our lifetime. Research is not always easy when I face a prop plane, dugout canoe or helicopter, but in my research I wanted to bring the reader the real sights, sounds and smells, that real sense of a place.”

Erica has also written two other excellent novels. In her second book “Into the Jungle,” a woman leaves behind everything she knows to take a job in Bolivia. Once there the job is defunct. The worst is yet to come when her trip abroad quickly turns into the fight of her life in the Bolivian jungle.

And in her most recent book, “Girl in Ice,” a successful linguist in dead Nordic languages, receives a call from a friend of her deceased twin who died mysteriously in the Arctic. He asks her help when his team discovers a girl frozen in ice, who thaws out alive speaking a language no one understands. Val discovers that the girl is dying. Something sinister is in the air and time is running out.

Happy reading mystery lovers!