The Endless Pines

by Jeffrey Koval Jr.

In the mid-1980s, there were a series of seasonal storms that you will not find adequately covered in the usual archival format or in weather databases, specifically those built to chronicle the regions making up the blindspots of national research laboratories. Combined with multiple agency-wide labor strikes throughout both the local and national levels, there were historic failures of data-capturing and severe weather reporting. Nevertheless, life went on. The people who lived in these so-called blindspots had existed before the government had hovered their magnifying glasses over the unique ecosystem that made up the southern portion of the state, the region known as the Pine Barrens, and they would presumably continue to exist long after any studies exhausted their funding. Attempting to navigate this hectic climate as unnoticeably as possible, an aspiring utility worker named Peter Demetri spends a summer in these woods, taking a series of odd-jobs under the table, attempting to build a career and traverse safely through the endless pines.

THE ENDLESS PINES is a tale about loneliness, ambition, and the things in the dark woods that we try to convince ourselves aren't actually the Jersey Devil. How confident are you in your intuition?

158 pages, Paperback

Published May 24, 2022