Ghost In The Thicket

He only wanted a few quiet days in the woods. Twenty-four-year-old Will Peters knows the Big Thicket of Southeast Texas better than most—pine and palmetto, blackwater sloughs, muscadine thick enough to swallow a man. Raised on his grandmother's plant lore and his uncle's small-engine shop, he's the kind of outdoorsman who reads the forest like a book. Then he hears a pump coughing across the water. He does the helpful thing. What he finds hidden behind the vines should never have been there. Armed men. A violent local legend named Ivan "Red" Harlan. And a choice that turns a fishing trip into a hunt—with Will as the prey. Cut off deep in the Thicket, truck ruined, no signal, no one expecting him home for days, Will refuses to run. He becomes something the hunters can't catch: a shadow between the trees. A smell of rot on the wind. The reason grown men start whispering after dark— The Ghost in the Thicket is watching. Survival thriller. Outdoors adventure. One man. One forest. A war fought with mud, thorns, cunning—and the land itself. GHOST IN THE THICKET A novel by Wallace Berry Approximately 55,000 words (300 paperback pages)