Rampage (Paperback) | Released: 14 Aug 2014

Four critically acclaimed novels...A master of the Midwestern gothic... If you haven't discovered Susan Taylor Chehak: Welcome to Rampage Madlen Cramer has come back home with her two young children to be reunited with her childhood friend Rafe, the sexy drifter who has abducted a four-year-old girl from an abusive foster family, leaving the parents for dead. Once again Chehak has mined her Midwestern roots and produced a highly charged novel where the questions of the present and the past are inextricably bound up with the secrets of the past. In this novel, Chehak sets her story in a small town called Rampage, and as its name implies, it is a place where much violence converges on those whose lives are bound up in its dark history. As the novel begins, Madlen Cramer has come back home with her two young children to be reunited there with her childhood friend Rafe, the sexy drifter who has abducted a four-year-old girl from an abusive foster family, leaving the parents for dead. During this hot Iowa summer, the past will refuse to stay past as painful truths begin to emerge: about Rafe's own foster family; about Madlen's marriage, whose bonds had begun to unravel in the months before her husband's tragic accident; and about her beautiful self-absorbed mother, whose passions bring about the devastating entanglement of two families in an embrace that cannot be undone until Rafe has gone on the rampage that will destroy everything in sight and leave readers breathless. A master of the Midwestern gothic, Susan Taylor Chehak is that rare writer who brings the closely observed detail to a level of storytelling that has earned her both an Edgar nomination and the praise of critics nationwide. Rampage is for people who understand, on every level, that you really can't go home again.
About the Author: Susan Taylor Chehak is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and the author of several novels, including The Great Disappointment, Smithereens, The Story of Annie D., and Harmony. Her short stories have appeared in Folio, Coe Review, Guernica Magazine, and The Adirondack Review, among other places. Her most recent publication is a work of nonfiction, What Happened to Paula: The Anatomy of a True Crime. Susan's other ongoing projects include All The Lost Girls, a website devoted to exploring the lost girl archetype and the grip her story continues to have on our cultural imagination and In Hollow Hill, where she documents evidence for the existence of goblins in the 60 acres of undeveloped woodland at the edge of Nowhere, in Linwood, Iowa. Susan is also the driving force behind Foreverland Press, an e-book publisher (at www.foreverlandpress.com) devoted to bringing back the backlists of fine writers who might have otherwise been overlooked. Other of her online projects include WhatHappenedToPaula.com, a collaborative web-based investigation into the as yet unsolved murder of a former schoolmate; TheTruthAboutPaulaO.com, a blogged memoir of her ongoing 12-year investigation into the Paula Oberbroeckling murder case; and The Foreverland Chronicles at www.foreverland4ever.com, where she has been working to create detailed narrative record of Foreverland and its denizens. Susan has taught fiction writing in the low residency MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles, the UCLA Extension Writers' Program, the University of Southern California, and the Summer Writing Festival at the University of Iowa. She grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, spent many years in Los Angeles, lives occasionally in Toronto, and at present calls Colorado her home.