Nick Chase's Great Escape

by Chris Orcutt

NICK CHASE is your average twenty-something guy. He works as a small-town reporter, lives with his grandmother, and sneaks his girlfriend over for evening trysts. When faced with trouble, however, he has a tendency to jump out the window. Alienated from the seemingly peaceful village of Willowbrook, Nick takes to the road in a desperate attempt to reach the second interview for his dream job. But as Nick soon learns, escaping your problems isn't easy, and at times can be outright dangerous.

Hardcover

Published November 1, 1999

About the author

Chris Orcutt is a professional writer with over thirty years of experience and more than a dozen meticulously crafted novels to his name.

Born in Maine, he has spent most of his life in New York. He attended college in Boston, graduating summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, with a degree in philosophy. His professional writing career began at Taconic Newspapers (where he was honored by the New York Press Association), followed by freelance reporting for the Poughkeepsie Journal, New York’s oldest newspaper.

In his 20s and early 30s, while honing his craft as a fiction writer, Orcutt earned a living as a high school American Studies teacher, college writing instructor, and speechwriter. His earlier fiction—including the Dakota Stevens Mystery Series and One Hundred Miles from Manhattan—has earned praise from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews.

For over a decade, Orcutt immersed himself in ’80s teen culture and shunned the internet in monastic devotion to his magnum opus, Bodaciously True & Totally Awesome, a 9-book episodic novel debuting in January 2026. Writing drafts on typewriters and vintage computers, blasting everything from A-Ha to ZZ Top, and drinking enough coffee to fill a swimming pool (seriously), he set out to craft an authentic and fearless exploration of the suburban teenage experience in 1980s America. The result prompted one cultural historian to dub him “Lord of the ’80s” and another “The American Tolstoy.”

He loathes bad writing, stoplights, Grammarly, and pretentious people—but loves old movies, Peanuts comics, Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, and cross-country skiing. Orcutt lives quietly in New York’s Hudson Valley with his wife and Muse, Alexas, and their dog Dashiell Hammett.
Follow me on Facebook