Ah! So finished another school days favorite today! Frank Peretti's "The Oath"!
In Hyde River, an old and isolated mining something dark and sinister is at work. Something very evil.
Striking at night, and without warning, it takes life in the most savage and chilling way imaginable. And its latest victim is a nature photographer named Cliff Benson, killed in brutal fashion while he is camping in the mountains. His wife Evelyn, who survived the attack, is found covered in blood and half delirious on a logging road. She now lies in a hospital bed, dazed and having very little memory of that attack.
Les Collins, the sheriff, having no hard evidence to go on, closes the case, believing the attack as the work of a rogue grizzly. The same goes for the other cases of people whose deaths and disappearances that have happened in Hyde River for years.
But this doesn't satisfy Cliffs brother, wildlife biologist Steve Benson. Steve knows bears and he also knows that his brother was seasoned woodsman, and would've taken precautions. And he is not going to let this whole matter drop and begins his own investigation.
The deputy sheriff Tracy Ellis isn't even convinced either. She had grown up in Hyde River, the very town haunted by secrets and strange incidents. She has seen thing that have been covered up before, things swept under the rug by her own boss, and knows something is wrong. So when another person went missing, she teams up with Steve in his search for the truth.
But the more Steve presses, the more the denizens of Hyde River close in their ranks, sworn to some kind of secrecy. Well, all but Levi Cobb, an old mechanic who often talks to himself. Seen by the town as a "crazy man" , he rants about the old superstitions and folk stories to anyone who would listen.
But when Steve gains access to old letters and diaries, belonging to the town's forefathers, is when he really starts to peel away layer after layer of the town's mystery that had surrounded it. As he continues both he and Tracy are being brought closer to the terrible secret the town is hiding. And what they eventually discover is a predator that is more horrifying than anything ever imagined before, and an evil that has the town in its grip.
And Steve realizes his own life is put into peril, even Tracy's. If they are to save themselves they have to confront the very full force of this evil.
Now that was a lot to lay out! But anyhow, this was another favorite of mine from my school days, as I've already said before at the beginning! Frank Peretti was one of several authors that I've read that I didn't know all that well. "The Oath" left a very big impression on me! When it caught my attention I didn't what to expect from it until I started reading it.
I thought It was going to something like a fantasy with horror elements, instead got a fantasy horror set in the mid 90s in the Pacific Northwest in the US. And that was quite fine with me! It kind of starts of as a sort of mystery at first in the first chapter until I get this hint that there is something more going on. There's also a Christian undertone running through too. But still I enjoyed it quite a bit! Need to get my hands on some of his other works!
by i-the-muso-1968