Framingham Author Releases New Novel

Erica Ferencik, a Nobscot resident, has a long-established reputation as a writer, having authored both a biography and a screenplay, and previously self-published two successful novels, Cracks in the Foundation, and Repeaters (which has been optioned to become a feature film by a Hollywood production company).

But with her latest novel, The River At Night, which was released this month by Gallery/Scout Press, a literary imprint of New York's Simon and Schuster publishing empire, she has hit the big time. The River At Night has been described as a female version of Deliverance - four middle-aged women go on a white-water rafting trip in the wilds of Maine, and it soon becomes a battle for survival when the vacation goes terribly wrong.

It is both a page-turner of a thriller and a work of poetic beauty, as she describes both the primal allure and the harrowing dangers of being on a remote river deep in the Maine woods, where both nature and some off the grid locals are conspiring to bring the trip to a tragic ending.

Last night at Barnes & Noble at Shoppers World on Route 9, Ferencik gave a talk about the book to a large and appreciative crowd, a literary homecoming of sorts to the town where she has lived for two decades. She described her own experiences white water rafting in Maine, and the week-long road trip she took there alone to meet and interview people who choose to live off the grid and off the land, deep in the woods and far from any neighbors.

The River At Night is receiving wide praise, from Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and Entertainment Weekly, to The Sydney Morning Herald in Australia. You can buy it online at Amazon, or better yet, head down down to Barnes & Noble and pick up one of the copies Ferencik signed last night, while they last.

But despite this latest triumph, Ferencik is not resting on her laurels for very long. She is under contract to write another novel for her publisher, and will be traveling to the Amazon rain forest in Peru later this year to research that book, which she described as another tale of survival in a forbidding environment.

But for now, you can satisfy your desire for armchair suspense and adventure with The River At Night.