Turning Flesh and Blood Into Smoke and Mirrors
By Rob Sangster
PEPPERMINT SCHNAPPS would have been the perfect title for a story I badly wanted to tell. It was about paddling a raft through 100 miles of wild rapids in remote northern Idaho with gallon jugs of peppermint schnapps on board. However, I realized that as non-fiction it would read like a bad journal entry. Refusing to be deterred, I tucked that story into the middle of my novel about a Saudi prince, the President of China, and a swashbuckling Wall Street CEO determined to corner the world market in rare earth elements. That was NO RETURN, a suspense/thriller published last year.
Now, let’s get back to that river and the inside story. We—six men and three women, all in our thirties—climbed out of a battered Blue Bird bus onto the steep bank of the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, also known as the River of No Return. Banners pasted on both sides of the bus read Bomar Marine Racing Team, a name with no connection to reality. We just liked the way it sounded.
After a long night of partying, we struggled out of our tents at first light, broke camp, and shoved our three oar-powered Avon Adventurer rafts into the rushing river.
The guy in the lead boat was an investment banker from Denver who answered only to the name Mad Dog. Since he was the only one of us who had paddled this river, we counted on him to warn us before we reached any especially treacherous rapid. Because he was serious about having his beer cold, he had filled a mesh bag with dozens of cans of Coors beer and tied it to trail behind his boat in the icy water. Within the first mile, reckless from three beers at breakfast, he cut too close to a granite ledge. It ripped the bag free, sending every beer can into the dark depths.
From that moment on, he stayed drunk on his only remaining beverage—peppermint schnapps. On the third day, he failed to give us a heads up before we rounded a bend, and there it was, the dreaded Dagger Falls, a 15-foot vertical drop. We dug in with our oars, but all three boats shot over the precipice. We were shaken up, lost some gear, but survived. What I didn’t mention in NO RETURN was that I suffered a cracked rib and rowed the remaining two days in periodic agony.
Another member of our crew who made it into my novel was Zacky, as beautiful and mysterious in real life as in fiction. She read paperbacks, often soggy, on the river and took solo walks out of sight on shore. She interacted with the rest of us as though she were an alien sent to observe our compulsion to risk our lives in tumultuous water crashing over craggy boulders.
I couldn’t resist exporting one more of our eccentric paddlers into NO RETURN. His rounded body and upward-tilting nose reminded me of an Emperor Penguin. Although he called himself Feed Bag on the river, he became Levi in his fictional life, a big-time bond trader in Manhattan who bet the survival of his company on a daily basis.
In each of my novels, two or more of the characters are real people I’ve encounter during my own adventures. Transforming them into fiction is one of my favorite challenges as an author.
About Rob Sangster
Yampa River – 1975
Rob Sangster’s first Jack Strider novel, Ground Truth, was #1 on Amazon Kindle. His second, Deep Time, won the 2017 EPIC Award for best suspense/thriller of the year. A Stanford lawyer with experience in finance, politics, and public service, he’s an avid sailor who has traveled in more than 100 countries. Rob and his mystery writer wife divide their time between their homes in Tennessee and on the wild coast of Nova Scotia.
EPIC Award Winner
“Wild ride, in-depth characters, compelling plot, cutting-edge issues.” Marq de Villiers, prize winning author, Order of Canada award.
“Masterful, high-stakes suspense thriller.” Lisa Turner, best selling mystery writer, Edgar Award nominee.
A disaster lurks beneath the ocean floor.
A riveting Jack Strider suspense.
Deep in the Earth’s crust beneath the Pacific Ocean lies an ancient site likely to be the birthplace of life on our planet . . .
And a portal into unimaginable forces and incredible wealth . .
A place where large ships mysteriously disappear, including the vessel carrying Jack Strider’s goddaughter, Katie . . .
A greedy energy baron risks everything to pursue vast supplies of power trapped deep in the Pacific Ocean sea bed off the Oregon coast. But the man’s psychopathic scheme is about to launch a terrifying tsunami that will destroy the entire west coast of the United States. Strider’s beautiful, brilliant partner in law and love joins the fight, and Jack leads a desperate attack on the largest offshore platform ever built. Jack Strider may be the only man who can stop the disaster that is already underway . . . or maybe no one can.
Rob Sangster’s Deep Time is on sale now until the 31st! Find it on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Google, and Apple!
