{"id":2490,"date":"2026-05-17T14:32:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T21:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/?p=2490"},"modified":"2026-05-17T14:32:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T21:32:15","slug":"tell-me-your-story-lori-duffy-foster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/?p=2490","title":{"rendered":"Tell Me Your Story: Lori Duffy Foster"},"content":{"rendered":"
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My honored guest for May is former crime reporter Lori Duffy Foster. Lori was born and raised in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State, where a piece of her heart remains. She is the award-winning author of SPRING MELT<\/em>,<\/a> a novel of historical suspense; NEVER LET GO<\/a>,<\/em> a thriller; and the Lisa Jamison Mystery Series. Look out for NO STRANGER HERE<\/em>,<\/a> a thriller, releasing from Speaking Volumes in March of 2027. She currently lives and writes in the hills of Northern Pennsylvania. Visit her at www.loriduffyfoster.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Much More Than Land<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Lori Duffy Foster<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The leaves were green, but there was a hint of color to them. So, it must have been August when Nancy and I shoved sleeping bags and flashlights into backpacks, grabbed the paddles to my mother\u2019s canoe, climbed on bikes, and headed for the marina at Ampersand Bay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We were fourteen years old and were both free until the next afternoon, so we decided to camp on public land along the shore of Lower Saranac Lake in the heart of the Adirondack Mountains, where both of us were born and grew up. We didn\u2019t think to bring food, pillows or a tent and we didn\u2019t know we were supposed pay New York State for the camp site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We just stashed our bikes and went, sans life preservers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not sure if our parents knew. If they did, they didn\u2019t ask for details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Never once did it occur to us how dangerous that was. I\u2019d always felt safe in those woods\u2014my steps softened by a carpet of pine needles, moss and decaying leaves, protected by the dense canopy of towering pines. I always felt powerful in that water, the color of black tea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But only eight months after our camping trip, two classmates canoed on that same chain of lakes when the water was far too cold for swimming. Their canoe capsized and they never made it to shore. One sat in front of me in homeroom and the other sat across from me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their desks remained empty for the rest of the school year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few months later, a 10-year-old neighbor was lost on a mountain for four days. She was found in good health, suffering only from hunger and embarrassment, but my ignorance was gone. I couldn\u2019t unsee the dangers in this place that was once my playground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My newfound wariness was healthy. I was often unsupervised as a child, which was great for my imagination, but probably not very safe. I still hiked Mount Baker alone sometimes, jumped from cliffs at the Gulch and on Long Lake into the Adirondack waters and swam in Lake Flower with friends long after midnight, but I was more careful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But looking back as an adult, it got me thinking. What if the trauma had been greater? What if it were more profound? How would that feel? What would it take to regain that passion, to love this land all over again? To recover from that loss?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s the thing about the Adirondacks. It\u2019s so much more than land on a map. It\u2019s an ache that hits you the moment you cross the Blue Line, the official boundary of the 6-million-acre park, where all the structure, all the stress, all demands of everyday life, can disappear. It\u2019s a place where solitude is immediately accessible, where days begin with fog rolling over still lakes, where tree-covered mountains stretch like endless blankets, where it\u2019s possible to simply be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To lose that? I can\u2019t even imagine the pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those questions, those thoughts, had always brewed deep inside me, but they rose to the surface in the mid-1990s when I met my husband, an avid hiker who loves the Adirondacks as much as I do, and when David Guterson released Snow Falling on Cedars<\/em>, one of my favorite novels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between Guterson\u2019s novel and our regular backpacking trips in the high peaks, the idea for my own novel began to form. It would be several more years before I put pen to paper, and even then, I wrote four more novels before I felt ready for its release. But that novel\u2014the first book I ever conceived, the first book I ever wrote\u2014was finally published in March. I hope you enjoy Spring Melt<\/em>, a book of historical suspense set in the Adirondack Mountains in the mid-1920s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And more than anything, I hope you visit the Adirondacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


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My honored guest for May is former crime reporter Lori Duffy Foster. Lori was born and raised in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State, where a piece of her heart remains. She is the award-winning author of SPRING MELT, a novel of historical suspense; NEVER LET GO, a thriller; and the Lisa Jamison Mystery […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[415,417,416],"class_list":["post-2490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lori-duffy-foster","tag-no-stranger-here","tag-spring-melt"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2H58s-Ea","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2490"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2495,"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2490\/revisions\/2495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}