"Killing Field"

Meghan Holloway found her first Nancy Drew mystery in a sun-dappled attic at the age of eight and subsequently fell in love with the grip and tautness of a well-told mystery. She flew an airplane before she learned how to drive a car, did her undergrad work in Creative Writing in the sweltering south, and finished a Masters of Library and Information Science in the blustery north. She spent a summer and fall in Maine picking peaches and apples, traveled the world for a few years, and did a stint fighting crime in the records section of a police department. She now lives on the Atlantic coast with her standard poodle and spends her days as a scientist with the requisite glasses but minus the lab coat.

Holloway applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Killing Field, and reported the following:

From page 69:

I had been so careful. I knew they would be looking for me, and I was not certain how powerful they were. I knew they were rich enough to offer my sister something she could not resist: a chance to change her fate. I had tried to do that for her, but they had offered her more than I was able to. I knew they were resourceful enough to make her disappear until the night Charles Two Rivers from the service station showed up on my doorstep and said I had a call from her.

The moment she whispered my name, I knew this was something bigger, something dangerous. Something worth killing over.

I slid to the floor and crawled to the bed, reaching under it and dragging my backpack out. I didn’t know if taking them would help at all, but I needed someone to believe me. This was all the proof I had.

I had been so careful, but I knew my face had been captured by the reporters. I had been so stupid to claim I was Emma Lewis. It had led them right to me.

I opened the backpack. All of the files I had stolen from that house outside of Denver were still there. I spread them on the floor in front of me.

I had only been able to grab what I could fit in my backpack. The walls of the room I found had been lined with file cabinets. When I broke into the house in the middle of the night, I had been looking for a single file.

I slid it from the pile now and flipped it open. Kimimela Between Lodges was printed neatly on the tab. The records contained nothing that told of how my sister loved to stand outside and watch storms roll over the plains. There was nothing that mentioned how infectious her laugh had been, how she had our mother’s smile, how big her dreams had been. She had wanted to leave Pine Ridge, go to college, and see the world.

There was nothing in the file that told of the fear in her voice when she called me, of the desperation in her plea. She had whispered everything she knew about the organization, voice wavering and tight. She had told me names and dates, descriptions of people and places.

I placed my hand over her name.

There was nothing in the file that told of how her body had been tossed aside on the floor like a piece of trash. There was nothing written down about how this was all my fault.

I did not realize I was crying until a tear fell from my chin to the page. I brushed it away quickly, but the damage was done. The ink where she had signed her name at the bottom of the page was smeared.

This excerpt from page 69 of Killing Field gives readers a sense of the mystery that sent Annie Between Lodges to Raven’s Gap in search of Hector. As a test, this scene captures the tone of the finale of the trilogy, a story filled with tension, twists, and sorrow.

Out of the entire series, Annie was the most difficult character for me to write. She is Oglala Lakota, and a significant amount of research was required to portray her experience and worldview both authentically and respectfully. While she possesses so much courage and tenacity, she is still young. Capturing that teenage voice—with all its bravado and vulnerability, its hope and fear, its jadedness and naivete—was one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced as a writer.

Annie captured my heart. She is one of the bravest characters I’ve written, and one of the things I appreciate most about her is how she forces Hector to confront his own shortcomings and emotions about the daughter who disappeared fifteen years ago.

Visit Meghan Holloway's website, and follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The Page 69 Test: Once More Unto the Breach.

Q&A with Meghan Holloway.

The Page 69 Test: Hunting Ground.

The Page 69 Test: Hiding Place.

My Book, The Movie: Killing Field.

--Marshal Zeringue