Can Ronald Geigle's Rowdy Novel The Woods be a Love Story?

WASHINGTON, Dec. 30, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Set amid thousand-year-old firs, dangerous logging railroads, and union riots in the Pacific Northwest during the late 1930s, Ronald Lee Geigle's new novel, The Woods, can easily be described as "rowdy" or perhaps "rough-hewn," if you're talking about its hard-scrabble characters or its high-mountain setting.  But a love story?

"This book is perhaps more of a love story than anything else," says Geigle, who grew up in the Pacific Northwest and whose own father was a logger.  "It explores some very complex characters and exposes the deep-seated love that they often don't even recognize themselves."  The Woods is being published in association with WordVirgin, an indie publishing platform based in Washington, DC, Seattle, and Edinburgh.

With a keen ear for colloquial dialogue, Geigle lets his characters tell their stories in the turbulent world of big-timber logging and labor unrest as America was just recovering from the Depression.  But in addition to a plot line that includes sabotage, deceit, and corporate greed, the characters in The Woods reveal their inner nuances in what becomes a tale of love, grand dreams, and transformation. 

The Woods is also a kind of love letter to the Pacific Northwest itself.  It deftly portrays the raw splendor of the Northwest's ice-topped peaks and unrelenting, natural power of the woods themselves.  Geigle's descriptions of the environment are lush and transcendent.

New Indie Publishing Firm

The Woods is being published in association with WordVirgin, an indie publishing platform based in Washington, DC, Seattle, and Edinburgh. The firm specializes in helping authors complete and market their fiction and non-fiction books. www.wordvirgin.com  

The Woods can be purchased at Amazon.com:  http://amzn.to/1cg0ggF

Excerpt:

Lydia nodded slowly as Fred finished speaking.  She sensed that this was an "aw-shucks" act that made them swoon down the valley whenever it was turned on.  She wondered how many valley girls had given in instantly, only to be left the next day or the next week for someone fairer or younger.  Nevertheless, she enjoyed the attention and the charm, to say nothing of the looks—through the polish and puckish wit, she sensed, was a warmth that she had not seen in most of the loggers she'd met. 

From there, it was—as her aunt wrote her after learning of their decision to get married—a "whirlwind" romance, something she had never expected of Lydia: the reserved teenager, who never asked to go out with a boy until her senior year; the careful, diligent student who refused to travel with the glee club to see Iowa State football games because of her studies.  This was the Lydia who now wrote home about a "wonderful, charming, breathtaking man whom I love from the bottom of my soul."

SOURCE WordVirgin