After the Ash Settles: A Guest Post by Sarah Crouch
Sarah Crouch captures the eerie chill of the Pacific Northwest in this emotionally charged thriller about a small town with dark secrets tucked away in its lush landscape. Read on for an exclusive essay from Sarah on writing The Briars.
Hardcover
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The Briars: A Novel
The Briars: A Novel
By Sarah Crouch
In Stock Online
Hardcover
$26.00
$29.00
The USA TODAY bestselling author of Middletide returns with a lush and atmospheric novel of suspense following a young woman whose job as a game warden puts her in the path of a murderer in a small town eager to protect its own.
The USA TODAY bestselling author of Middletide returns with a lush and atmospheric novel of suspense following a young woman whose job as a game warden puts her in the path of a murderer in a small town eager to protect its own.
It’s quite a place, Mount St. Helens.
I wasn’t born when it blew in 1980, but I grew up a stone’s throw from the mountain and was raised on stories about the blast. When I was a kid, my family took the long, stomach-churning drive around the base to gawk at the ruined north face like tourists. And once, armed with a beach shovel, I excavated our vegetable garden in search of the fine layer of ash my mother swore would still be down there somewhere. (It was.)
When I sat down to write my sophomore novel, I had a hunch that the lopsided volcano rising from the untamed heart of Washington State would be a perfect setting for THE BRIARS, a story about resilience. About rebirth.
Forty-five years ago, the eruption erased centuries of old growth in a matter of minutes, wiping away sixty thousand acres of pine forest and leaving the landscape raw and scarred. And yet—life returned. Animals ventured back into the blast zone. Pioneering plants reclaimed the slopes. New saplings took root. The mountain is a living reminder that devastation doesn’t end a story; it simply changes what grows next.
In my debut novel, MIDDLETIDE, I explored the idea of coming home, but with THE BRIARS, I wanted to push further. To examine what happens when the places and people we anchor ourselves to are ripped from us, and how we find peace in the aftermath.
When readers meet Annie Heston in THE BRIARS, she is reeling. Fleeing north after a failed relationship, she takes a position as a game warden in the quaint mountain town of Lake Lumin. She finds solace beneath the pines, and in the unlikely companionship of Daniel Barela, a reclusive carpenter living in an old boathouse on the lakeshore. But when the body of a young woman is discovered in the brambles that border Daniel’s property, Annie must rely on her wilderness instincts to uncover a killer in a small town determined to protect its own.
Annie has, like so many of us, endured an identity-defining rupture and must reckon with what comes next. Daniel carries secrets buried under a surface-level calm. In this way, both characters are a reflection of the mountain that looms at their backs.
Perhaps that’s why Mount St. Helens refused to remain a mere backdrop as I wrote and became an active presence instead—a driving force. It shaped the choices made by the characters and, just like the volcano, Annie and Daniel heal not by returning to what they once were, but by becoming something new. It was a beautiful give and take, a joy to write, and my hope is that those who open THE BRIARS will turn the final page reminded that devastation is not the end.
Survival doesn’t always mean wholeness, but given time and stubborn faith, beauty returns in unexpected ways. Mount St. Helens stands as proof of this, and is not just the setting of THE BRIARS, but its soul as well.