Summary

Millions of people are applying for citizenship to the most exclusive country in the world: Vulgaria. Vulgaria boasts zero unemployment and crime, while supplying its citizens with medication that enables them to remain young and healthy. It’s no wonder Director Garrett Frost spends most of his time reviewing applications instead of catching children.

Vulgaria’s supreme law dictates that children are illegal; it’s punishable by death to conceive or harbor them. A rare genetic mutation gives Garrett the unique traits that ideally suit him to the position of Director of Juvenile Procurement and Regulation Enforcement. However, it also shortens his life span and makes it impossible to fulfill his dream of fatherhood. As a result, he revels in keeping his country devoid of his emotional triggers by enforcing the anti-child law.

When an increasingly violent propaganda campaign rallies the Vulgarians against him, the country's ruler advises Garrett that he may need to temporarily leave Vulgaria for the first time in sixty years. In separating from the politically troubled country he loves, Garrett must again face an outside world where depression nearly drove him to suicide, and ultimately confront his capability to pursue a new life.

Author's Message

As a person who has struggled with infertility, I wrote Garrett's story to give a male voice to a problem that doesn't restrict itself to gender. It's my hope that through this book individuals from any walk of life who dream of but are denied parenthood will not feel as alone. Additionally, I hope The Child Catcher is able to help the friends and family of those who struggle with this pain understand the depths to which it can go.

Inspiring media

I'm very drawn to certain images when I write. Click on or hover above the photos below for the lines these pictures inspired.

My “shining light” will sparkle when she wears this dress. When she turns in it, the sunlight will catch her and she’ll twinkle. She’ll run into my arms. I’ll pick her up – twirl her around and hear her laughter... My beautiful, beautiful little girl. No one will ever love you as much as I do.

Logically he knew it was innocent, but he felt like the garment had been positioned across from the dishwashing liquid aisle to draw him in. Flowers and lace.

Spires of dangling Nicotiana, proud Dutch irises above forget-me-not blossoms, silver feather interwoven with white petunia. Everything had been strategically planted with the utmost aesthetic care.

But it was the type of city he preferred looking at, as opposed to being in. The panoramic view across Elliott Bay was perfect.

After a long life and sixty years of marriage, we’d be in a companion side-by-side crypt in Lake View. The roads are lined in pink weeping cherry blossom trees, and the scent of the lake from the east blows up through the flowers.

Benaroya Hall had that intoxicating fragrance of music – Earthy rosin from stringed bows. Leather wallets, shoes, and purses. Sweetness of cedar wood and cigar boxes. Black Cavendish pipe tobacco and honey. The dry iris perfume of old women.

Where did the idea come from? This gentleman above. Don't know who he is? Click on the image for more information.

In 2005 he was voted "the scariest villain in children's books" and in 2008 Entertainment Weekly named him one of the "50 Most Vile Movie Villains."

Garrett describes himself as feeling "haunted" and "shattered and broken on the shore." Even as he's finally reaching out, it's always in the back of his mind that he's unable to be "fixed" and escape from his past and circumstance.

The beautiful aria, "Tombe degli avi miei" is one of the final numbers of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor. At this point in the opera, having lost Lucia, Edgardo has resolved to end his life. Especially in this remarkable performance by Pavol Breslik, I think the book's tone and Garrett's mindset comes clearly through.

Excerpt one - Chapter 1

Lily. Dianthus and heavy, penetrating brugmansias in pots. Decadent tuberose. Arabian Jasmine. Creamy, ripe avocados and grass. Water from PVC garden hoses.

Faster than thoughts could form, the scents hit him in immediate, bold flashes, undiluted by language. With every breath, he took in the world and processed it first and foremost by its fragrance. Hyperosmia had always been a part of his life – a product of the genetic condition that also gave him violet colored eyes people stared at, as if they were worth complimenting. It was how he’d known from across the city his garden utopia was burning.

Smoke. Heat. The twisted, sweet burning of trees still green and vibrant. Floral and balsamic spices – Epiphyllum Oxypetalm, The Queen of the Night. And SMOKE. Insidious SMOKE.

By the time he arrived, it’d been too late. Everything had been razed and blackened stumps from citrus trees littered the area where the innocent had fallen. Garrett had raked most of the bramble into the burned out husk of his greenhouse and left it there.

It might’ve been easier had the massacre been an accident. The Almighty sending a lightning bolt into the greenhouse. But the violation had been intended to convey a message. And in case he was too thick to pick up on it, that message had arrived through his front window on the back of a brick.

 

Excerpt Two - Chapter 5

If the universe was a fair place and not an eternal sinkhole you’d still be dead. But I would be too. After a long life and sixty years of marriage, we’d be in a companion side-by-side crypt in Lake View. The roads are lined in pink weeping cherry blossom trees, and the scent of the lake from the east blows up through the flowers.

Fresh, clean rose sweetness. Green, newly clipped grass. Ringing cold air, like licked silver spoons. Musty chrysanthemums.

Our children would put flowers by our markers. And their children would put flowers by our markers. And yes, someday no one would be left who would remember us, but it wouldn’t matter. We would have done something remarkable. Something worthwhile. We’d have played a part in shaping the future. I would be at peace, having done what I had always wanted to do – be a father.

The universe, however, was not a fair place. The universe was a conniving bitch that raped every good thing with a jack hammer.

Without mercy, this whore thumped her elbows on the table and held up her cards. She fanned them out with a grin – all the images of everything he desperately wanted. And she’d fling them in his face one by one.

excerpt Three - Chapter 20

Someday Garrett would open the white rectangular box that had been sealed for almost sixty years, and give it to her. But first, he imagined sitting in the hospital rocking chair again and his child being placed in his arms.

Steamed white rice. Velvet, warm pudding just off the stove. Heavy whipping cream poured slow and smooth. Lily of the Valley at six in the morning, the dew still fresh on their petite bells.

He’d fold out a corner of the blanket, and her eyes would look at him for the first time. Would she know? How could she not?

Yes, it’s me. I’m your father. No child has ever been wanted as much as you. I’ve loved you forever, and I’ll never let you go. He’d want to continue looking at her, but he wouldn’t be able to. He’d press her to his chest and cry. The pain from wanting her for so long would be over. She was there. No longer a mirage, but real.

My baby. My precious little girl. I’ll call you “Eleanor” because it means “shining light.” That’s what you are to me. My lighthouse. And I’ll never again find myself shattered and broken on the shore because I’ll have you at last. Eleanor. My Eleanor…

Garrett almost allowed himself to believe he could have this without difficulty. But no, the picture of sharing a life with Alice and someday holding his child broke apart. The universe bitch kicked open the door, drew back her sledgehammer, and smashed the dream back into shards. A long dormant anxiety began to suffuse his body – the angst of being in the hot seat again.