New novel features Mendocino County scenes
“Came A Horseman,” a new novel by longtime journalist and outdoorsman Paul McHugh, is largely set on the Lost Coast of Mendocino and Humboldt counties.
“The coast and its culture, its wildlife and ecology, its forest lands, rivers and seascapes, have influenced me steadily and strongly throughout my career,” said McHugh, who describes his book as a “postapocalyptic Western with a murder mystery at the center of its plot.
“My hero-cum-antihero,” he said, “becomes an amateur sleuth. He must solve a local killing in order to absolve himself of blame. Then, about halfway through, the situation grows more fraught and the story climaxes as an action and adventure thriller.”
McHugh, formerly of Mendocino, now resides in Redwood City. “Came A Horseman” (via ElkHeart Books) is his seventh book and fourth novel. His other novels are “The Blind Pool,” “The Search for Goodbyeto-Rains” and “Deadlines,” which won Best Mystery from the National Indie Excellence Awards and from the Bay Area Independent Publishers.
“Came A Horseman” mentions several areas in Humboldt County within its 224 pages, including Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, the Arcata Plaza and Humboldt State University, as well as the Lost Coast.
“In the book, I don’t specify precisely where the location is, but it incorporates aspects of the whole lush and lovely landscape that lies between Shelter Cove and Westport,” McHugh said. “The closest any one spot comes to being portrayed is the Usal Valley,
but I deployed my poetic license to make a couple of alterations. The number one thing I did was to make the area’s terrain somewhat less steep.”
He added: “The Lost Coast is commonly defined as the ‘unroaded’ area between the mouth of the Mattole River and Shelter Cove. However, after having hiked and paddled extensively around and through that region, I’d expand the ‘Lost’ definition to include everything from the mouth of the Mattole all the way south almost to Westport, with a ‘time-out’ for the patch of civilization around Shelter Cove. And, I’d award further wild privileges to a northern area between Centerville Beach and Cape Mendocino. When you voyage
past these parts of the coast, a person can feel nearly as lost as it’s possible to be, anywhere in California.”
McHugh — whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, San Jose Mercury News and, for decades, in the San Francisco Chronicle — first visited Humboldt County in 1973.
“I began by kayaking rivers like the Smith and the Klamath, and camping and backpacking through the redwoods,” McHugh said. “… I also like Lake Earl and the Tolowa Dunes for the birding and Native American history. One of my all-time favorite explorations of Mendocino and Humboldt was paddling the whole length of the Eel
River, from Van Arsdale Dam near Ukiah, past Fortuna, out into the ocean, and then finally coming around and back in to make landfall at Arcata in Humboldt Bay. Then, I and my teammates … went to the Larrupin’ Cafe for a celebratory dinner.”
McHugh was inspired to use the Lost Coast as a primary setting for his book after visiting the vast expanse decades ago.
“I find it a fantastically beautiful region,” he said. “I also delight in its exotic, mysterious reputation. Beyond that, the region’s sheer remoteness makes it a bit of a blank canvas, which is extremely useful for a fiction writer.”
A book launch for “Came A Horseman” is planned in partnership with Christie Olson Day of The Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino. The Facebook Live event is set for Thursday at noon. For more information, go to https://www.gallerybookshop.com. “At the event, I shall read, be interviewed by The Gallery’s event coordinator, Rob Hawthorn, and then take questions from the Zoom audience,” McHugh said. “There will even be a ‘mingle’ toward the end, where folks can just chat with me about whatever they like — similar to what happens at an in-person book reading.”
“Came A Horseman” sells for $16.95 (paperback) and $2.99 (e-book). For more information about the author, go to www.paulmchugh.net.