The kind of strength that cannot be broken and never dies. It possesses you on every page of Rene Denfeld’s new classic The Child Finder.[1] It is epic. It is simple. The kind of truth that hurts, that buries you. Until you are free. If you are free.

It happens in the Skookum Forest of Oregon. Skookum, the ancient word for Danger—a word I learned in college and wrote about. But not like this. Not like glacial cycles so massive, so ponderous, so deadly and so perfect for spawning hell and concealing endless torture. Not like unavoidable secrets that are bottomless ravines, traps that line the mountain peaks where so much that you fear is hidden. Amorphous unknown answers loom. Like, why is Naomi so afraid of “Big”?

There is Naomi, the child finder and her training. Maybe it was unconventional. But she learned to win in conventional ways, like dogged determination and being tougher than the avalanche. The avalanche was her life. It both buried and pushed her on. It became the source of all strength, mother’s love. Even though she wasn’t one, she knew. The backstory of how she knew jars you. Repeatedly. She had a lot of help to learn it, and that is a large part of what makes this book vital and required.

Naomi also learned a great deal on her own. The world and its dark side made her the heir to dreams big enough to knock a bus over. She became a boxer. I watched her tattoo the old instructor and bag up all his tricks. Win! Do it without remorse. Win. That which sounds like the world’s worst case of unsportsmanlike conduct is at once a whisper and a rabbit punch. When your opponents are monsters, there’s no shaking hands. This book tells the right story. This book tells it like it needs to be told. No holds barred.

This story is told to us by Skookum writer—Rene Denfeld, who knows. She knows and she cares and she shows it in open and public ways. Rene is out there on Facebook, beautifully. And she leads strongly softly and lovingly in her home and all around the Portland writing community—and around the world. Follow her.

More than the excellent plot, beyond the living characters and beyond the focused voice that speaks so well, it is the theme. It is the subject, the topic of this story that draws us into dark places that hide light like steel-jawed traps, like buried seeds, erupting unexpectedly. This subject matter is all-important. Read it, feel it, brawl with it, resolve the conflict within it. Yes. Do this, and we can plant true peace. But first, we need to talk about it. It can happen. Rene and her Naomi learn and share. We are bound to be protectors.

Photo: Rene’s portrait from her website is used here with my thanks for her permission.

“Bio” from her book cover: “Rene Denfeld is an internationally bestselling author, journalist, and licensed investigator specializing in death penalty work. She has written for the New York Times Magazine, the Oregonian, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. She is also the author of the award-winning novel The Enchanted[2] as well as three works of non-fiction.”

[1] http://renedenfeld.com/author/biography/
[2] http://bentari.com/Blog/Entry.aspx?pid=276&bid=51&beid=1134