Sam Clark's Blog

Today is the day you can order your copy of The Inland Sea: A Mystery at your favorite book store or online site!

Thanks to Rootstock Publishing for a great send off into the fictional book world.

https://www.facebook.com/rootstockpub...

I'm very happy to share advance praise that has been received for the soon-to-be-published The Inland Sea.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...

A novel crafted with intricate straight lines and curves, like a boat. A mystery that’s also about lake lore, boats, engines, fishing — and about men, what they talk about and what they don’t, about vanishing acts, New England religion, and the unpredictable consequences of revenge. Take a ride with Sam Clark’s sure hand guiding you through time and space and detection in the environs of Lake Champlain!
-Dick Cluster, author of Return to Sender, and other novels in the Alex Glauberman mystery series.

Evidence of intelligence and emotional complexity is everywhere in the characters Sam Clark has created for his unusually constructed and sophisticated mystery, The Inland Sea.) An assortment of re-built boats skim across a lake bordered by forest and farm, carrying readers between islands, slamming waves, treacherous rocks, and the unpredictable currents of human capability. Designed with a craftsperson’s care and a philosopher’s depth, The Inland Sea covers a lot of territory.
Judith Chalmer, author of two books of poetry, Out of History’s Junk Jar, and most recently, Minnow

I love this book. Religion, in all its bizarre, ominous, American permutations, pulses in this mystery like the springs that feed into a lake.
-Jon M. Sweeney, author of The Pope Who Quit, optioned by HBO

Like his Detective Fred Davis, Sam Clark likes to take his time. Both the investigator and the author are after the details, whether of boats, intricate waterways, the varieties of Vietnamese cuisine, or above all the people they encounter in the course of the investigation. Together, through Davis' meticulous dedication and Clark's clear, precise prose, they unpack the case of a strange killing in the intriguing landscape of the Inland Sea.
-NYT Notable Book novelist Larry Duberstein (The Handsome Sailor, The Marriage Hearse)

Part police procedural and part mystery, The Inland Sea deftly weaves together past and present, drawing us in to the lives of men at home on the waterways of Lake Champlain. As Detective Fred Davis searches for clues to a murder victim’s secret past, he is forced to confront his own sense of loss and loneliness. Sam Clark's debut novel tells the tantalizing tale of men yearning for authentic lives, defying the expectations of family and a community defined by the pull of the Inland Sea.
- Susan Ritz, author of A Dream to Die For

Vermont Public Radio featured local authors publishing a book during the pandemic.

Take a listen to my brief description of "The Inland Sea" on the show that aired October 20, 2020,

https://cpa.ds.npr.org/vpr/audio/2020...

A link to the show and books featured can be found on their website: https://www.vpr.org/post/new-and-old-...

I grew up in Poughkeepsie in the Quaker Community there. Our family had a place on an island in Upper Saranac Lake, in the Adirondacks. We lost the place later, but The Island still lives in much of what I build, and certainly in The Inland Sea.

I have always been interested in the history and people of New England, and the ideas that took root here. It’s what I studied in school, and read about to this day. I have often attempted to write about this subject, and my own family’s relationship to it, but with little success. I have a drawer full of memoirs, philosophical pieces, stories, and other manuscripts that don’t quite work. But on November 4, 2008, the day Barack Obama was elected, I was hit by a car while biking, not far from my home in Plainfield, Vermont. I couldn’t do any woodworking for a few months, but I could still type. I decided to approach this material again in the form of a mystery novel.

During this period our family had a spot, with a boat, an old house-trailer and a dock in a a lakeside campground called Montani’s, on the eastern side of South Hero, Vermont. This is the part of Lake Champlain known as The Inland Sea. I love the place and also the name. It seemed natural to locate my story there.

It might seem absurd to jump from writing building books to writing a novel, but to me principles to live by, and principles to build by, aren’t that different. You could argue that constructing a detective story isn’t entirely different from constructing a build book, or a house.