A big congratulations to our client Alan W. Lehmann on his recent publication, Death is a Highway.
Here's his short essay on what led him to set his story on the infamous Highway of Tears.
Death is a Highway
For many years, hitchhiking was used extensively by people lacking transportation alternatives to get around the Northwest. Highways here are long and comparatively empty, and for decades the unwritten ethos of the region dictated that drivers stop to offer help or a ride to anyone who signaled their need for such assistance.
In more recent decades, however, the assumed generosity and goodwill of both drivers and ride-seekers has been tarnished by danger. Both drivers and hitch-hikers have had among their numbers dangerous criminals—rapists, human traffickers, and killers.
Numerous women and girls, many of them from First Nations, have disappeared along Highway 16, earning it the sobriquet “highway of tears.” Most of these women are likely dead. And the wilderness that dominates the region on both sides of the highway offers a would-be killer thousands of places in which a body could be secreted until natural predators and decay dispose of the remains.
The motives driving these killers remain something of a mystery, as there have been few arrests. One young man was arrested in 2010 and found to have killed four women. An online commentator reported that the killer “had come from a normal family, and no one had ever pinned him as being violent.”
Following her coverage of the trial of a World War II war criminal, German philosopher Hannah Arendt coined the term “banality of evil,” an effort to depict a normal, civilized population becoming willing participants in creating the Holocaust. Something that is banal is commonplace, trite and predictable. If killing becomes banal, it becomes expected, almost normal.
I decided to write a novel about such banality set in British Columbia’s Northwest along Highway 16. As I began the book, the men who committed the first killing practically invented themselves. Two features of their lives led to conditioning their personalities. One of them is a Canadian veteran of the war in Afghanistan, where he participated in casual brutality and rape. The other suffers from marginal schizophrenia and experiences command hallucinations—demands that he kill, like those reported by New York serial killer David Berkowitz (a.k.a. Son of Sam) in the 1970s.
As the story unfolded in my imagination, other characters revealed their weaknesses, and even their personal proclivity toward violence. Generally, citizens rely on the government’s legal monopoly on the use of force to prevent unjustified brutality or physical cruelty. But sometimes those seeking eye-for-an-eye justice ignore the niceties of the legal system, and the evils of retaliation can unfold in unexpected ways.
In the midst of everyday life, ordinary people can become indirectly involved in criminal cases, finding themselves in compromising situations or simply stumbling into danger by chance. Our varied wishes for fulfillment (love, achievement, social significance, or even survival) can become tainted through failures and disappointments, sometimes leading us into utterly surprising and dangerous situations. And behind all our supposed free choices lies the fact that, as Arthur C. Clark observed, “All human plans are subject to ruthless revision by nature.”
Despite whatever may lie hidden within our “hearts of darkness,” sometimes we may also experience redemption. This fact, too, is part of the human condition. Life may nearly overwhelm us with reasons for despair, but we are rarely completely without hope. This, too, is evident in Death is a Highway.
The events of this novel contrast the familiar, casual carelessness of contemporary life with the focused, professional determination to bring criminals to justice, despite the complex factors mitigating against success.
Discussions with early readers have frequently become conversational debates about crime and victimhood, and the nature of justice, perennially critical issues in contemporary society.
Highway 16, the Highway of Tears, is infamous for women and girls who have disappeared along its route. When a young woman’s mutilated corpse is found in a deserted campground, RCMP officers begin investigating the new case. Although they quickly uncover likely suspects, solid evidence fails to materialize. Yet a chain of surprises from unexpected sources drives the action to its shocking conclusion.
Grab your copy of Death is a Highway here.
About the Author
Alan W Lehmann is also the author of three previous novels available through Amazon.com and other online sites. HAMLET the NOVEL retells Shakespeare's famous story in contemporary language. INCA SUNSET is a historical novel telling the story of the Spanish invasion of Peru and the fall of the Inca Empire in the 1530s. DENVER AQUARIUS is a coming-of-age novel of a young man in Denver, Colorado in the 1970s.
