Regional Reads
Moscow author’s latest book a tale of revenge set in Idaho
Moscow author Stuart L. Scott’s second novel, “Spirit Lake Payback,” was released this week.
The self-published book follows the story of three women, Mildred Mercer, Bernadette Bagdaserian and Eleanor Greenburg, who come to northern Idaho to escape their pasts, but eventually the past finds them. It’s a story of revenge that begins during World War II with Mildred, a teenage prostitute in Dorris, Calif., who is saved from her downtrodden existence by Pat McBride, who buys her a bus ticket to Seattle to start a new life. Headstrong and independent, she catches the eye of a neighbor who sweeps her away to Idaho. Meanwhile, Eleanor’s story begins in Germany, where she is separated from her family at Auschwitz and becomes the obsession of a Nazi scientist. She later promises her captor they will reunite one day and they do, in Idaho. The third woman, Bernadette, is the victim of a serial bigamist who seeks out “middle-aged women of questionable beauty.”
The novel, only 108 pages, continues into the mid-’90s in what Kirkus Reviews called, “a deceptively slim yet viciously potent slice of female retribution.”
Scott has worked for the federal government in probation and parole and served in the military. He began writing as a way to deal with post-traumatic stress issues. He has lived in Moscow since 1981. The book is for sale at BookPeople of Moscow and online.
— Inland 360 staff
