The Hanging Woods [Kindle Edition]

Scott Loring Sanders (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 10 Up—This psychological thriller is told by a seemingly unrepentant murderer. Walter narrates a tale of the tenuous friendship of three boys at loose ends during the summer before they begin high school. Walter lives with his parents in relative comfort in spite of his father's brutal verbal abuse. Mothball, perhaps the most well adjusted of the three, is overweight and easygoing, part of a large family with little money. Jimmy is obviously troubled; it is revealed that the abuse he suffers does not stop with physical blows, but extends to sexual assault. Tensions mount as the boys push one another in ways that go beyond the normal teen behavior. Many bizarre events occur, not the least of which is Mothball's obsession with keeping a turkey alive after its head has been severed. Sanders tries to develop the case for Walter being psychopathic, dripping clues about fire, bedwetting, and cruelty to animals. But, these clues are blatantly superficial. The animal cruelty depicted is within the context of learning to hunt; the fire is presented as an accident. Readers are also misled by the fact that Walter tells the story, yet is untruthful, giving several false clues. There are some elements of true suspense and many very well-written passages, yet the book as a whole is not as cohesive as it could be.—Wendy Smith-D'Arezzo, Loyola College, Baltimore, MD
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From Booklist

At the opening of this disturbing novel, 15-year-old Walter bludgeons a fox to death and feels, for the first time, “how flimsy life is.” The first scene’s visceral brutality forms the undercurrent to this suspenseful story, set in a small, economically depressed town in 1975 Alabama. Caught restlessly between childhood and adolescence, Walter and his best friends, Mothball and Jimmy, share a camaraderie spiked with aggression that echoes racial tensions in their community and in their homes. While reading his mother’s diary, Walter discovers a horrifying secret, unleashing a chain of shocking events that ends in murder. Writing in Walter’s believable voice, Sanders suggests motivations that lead the characters to act, but despite his efforts, the novel maintains a persistent moral ambiguity and a rushed ending that will unsettle readers. Themes of crime, punishment, and the mysterious, lethal volatility that can result from guilt, rage, sorrow, cruelty, and unspoken truths drive this gripping story, which, like Chris Lynch’s Inexcusable (2006), invites readers to examine the darkest facets of human behavior. Grades 9-12. --Gillian Engberg

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 323 KB
• Print Length: 339 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0618881255
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (March 21, 2008)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B003KK5DWW
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #393,898 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

More About the Author

I was born in Atlanta, Georgia on April 20, 1970. For the first few years of my life, I lived in various towns and cities throughout the South. When I was seven, I moved to Long Valley, New Jersey, where I stayed until I graduated from high school. I grew up playing sports--football, lacrosse, baseball, ice hockey, skiing, and just about everything else. But I also had another passion: reading. My mother always read to me from as far back as I can remember. When I was ten, I couldn't wait for my father to get home from work so he could read me the next chapter of Firestarter by Stephen King. Nothing made me happier than sitting on the couch next to him as he read that story. It took me to another world.

In middle school, I had some great teachers that introduced me to books like The Outsiders, Island of the Blue Dolphins, The Pigman, and To Kill A Mockingbird. And to authors like Jack London, Edgar Allan Poe, and John Steinbeck. When I was in the seventh grade, I got Of Mice and Men from the library and began reading it that same evening. The next morning, I played hooky from school in order to finish it. I remember saying to myself after I had completed it that I wanted to write a book like that someday.

In high school, I dabbled with poetry and daydreamed of being a writer. I had a teacher who took notice of my writing and suggested that I pursue it, but I didn't really think much about it. After high school, I went to Whittier College for two years and then transferred to Virginia Tech where I received my B.A. in English. I again had professors who commented on my writing, but for some reason, I didn't pursue it. Becoming a writer didn't seem realistic to me. It didn't seem like something I was capable of doing.

I met my wife, Jocelyn, at Virginia Tech, and in 1993 we had a son, Mason. Being quite young, and with a new baby to take care of, the idea of being a writer drifted away from me entirely. After I graduated, I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I had to do something to take care of my family, so I did just about anything and everything to make money. I was a bartender, a waiter, a house painter, and a lumberjack. I worked on a Christmas tree farm, worked in a factory, and was a counselor for juvenile delinquent boys at an outdoor wilderness program. In 1998, I got a "real" job working as a sales consultant for Verizon. For the next five years, I worked in Corporate America. I won awards and made a fair amount of money, but I wasn't happy. I knew there had to be something else out there for me, but I didn't know what it was. Writing, however, always crept into the back of my mind.

I knew if I wanted to get out of corporate life, I was going to have to work for it. So I decided to write a book. Every night after work, I came home and worked on it. And it was hard. I had no idea how difficult it was to actually sit down and write. The novel took about a year to complete, and it was awful. I realized that if I wanted to become a writer, I had to go back to school. In 2003, I applied to the Creative Writing program at Hollins University. I only applied because it happened to be close to where I lived, not because I thought I had a shot of getting in. But somehow I got accepted.

I quit my job, and after ten years of being away, I went back to school. I worked extremely hard, learned everything I possibly could about the craft of writing, and for my thesis I wrote a novel. That novel was The Hanging Woods. Shortly after graduating in 2005, an agent offered me representation. In 2006, Houghton Mifflin bought the novel. Two weeks after the novel was sold, I received word that I'd won a writing fellowship from the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, where they would actually pay me to write my next novel.

It all happened very fast (or very slowly, depending on how you look at it--I didn't write my first word of prose until I was thirty-two years old.) But the point is this: I went for it. From that time in the seventh grade when I faked an illness to read Of Mice and Men, I knew I wanted to be a writer. It just took me a little while to get around to it. Someone once said, Find a job you love and you'll never work another day in your life. I live by that motto. Writing is extremely difficult. The publishing world is a brutal one. But if you want it badly enough--to become an author or whatever it is that you want to do--you can make it happen. For me, writing isn't a job, it is simply what I love to do. You can check out my website for more information: www.scottloringsanders.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Modern, and More Real, 'To Kill a Mockingbird', April 5, 2008

By 

Clifford Garstang (Staunton, Virginia USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Hanging Woods (Hardcover)

I'm not saying that this debut novel is destined to endure like the Harper Lee classic, but there are some similiarities: 3 kids on the verge of trouble, a mystery man in a small Alabama town, a heated trial. In one way, though, this book will resonate in a way Mockingbird can't. These kids are real. They aren't angels. And they come from deeply flawed families. Kids today might have a hard time relating to Scout Finch, but they may see themselves in Walter Sithol.

And although the book is clearly a YA novel, its sharp edges and dark side will keep a more mature reader engaged right to the end. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Full Review:

On the one hand, The Hanging Woods, the debut novel from Scott Loring Sanders, seems unmistakably to be in the "young-adult" genre. It is about early teen boys, and its language and situations are clearly geared for young people. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine a darker story, or a protagonist as flawed as young Walter Sithol. And that leads me to wonder what young readers think of this boy, which also leads me to doubt my initial certainty that this book is solely for teenagers. While I believe they can handle it and learn from it, I also think that the adult reader will appreciate the complexities that emerge in the three central characters and enjoy the awful story that unfolds.

Walter is a typical boy in a small Alabama town in the mid-70s. His father is tough on him and his mother is over-protective. He hangs out with Jimmy and Raymond, known as Mothball, and they swim and fish and hang out together and occasionally get on each others' nerves. Walter carries a secret, though, and it may mildly annoy the reader that he refers to having seen his mother's diary without disclosing to the reader what he has read there. In any case, for various reasons tension builds between Walter and the other boys. Sanders renders these three boys with care, so that they are utterly distinct: Jimmy, the ringleader and troublemaker; Mothball, the chubby one, afraid of everything; and Walter, the smart one, the one who seems to have a firmer sense of right and wrong.

Then there is "the Troll," a Vietnam veteran who lives under a bridge and becomes both a legend and a mystery to the boys, a town oddity for them to taunt and an easy scapegoat when things go wrong. The more the Troll is revealed in this story, the more the whole book seems to be following the model of To Kill a Mockingbird. The three kids in some ways even resemble Scout, Jem, and Dill; the Troll seems very much like Boo Radley; and eventually there is even a trial scene that echoes the one in the Harper Lee classic. There's nothing wrong with imitating a masterpiece, but what's ingenious here is that just at the point where the reader is convinced that Mockingbird is the template, Sanders has young Walter read that novel and learn from it. And it is from that point on that The Hanging Woods diverges and becomes its own terrifying story.

It is, I think, risky to place a boy such as Walter at the center of a novel, particularly one aimed at young people. And yet, the author trusts the reader of any age to see Walter's flaws, and to keep reading despite them. It's a gamble that pays off.

This is a very good read. Highly recommended.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Gripping Must Read, July 2, 2008

By 

Mike Reynolds, Author: Surviving Bill (New Jersey) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Hanging Woods (Hardcover)

Drawn in by impeccable writing, engaging characters and rich (sometimes outright bizarre)images/scenes, I found myself immediately engrossed with the book. The story turned in several unforseen directions and filled me with equal parts hysterics, nostalgia and horror. Be prepared to fall into a world that is both remarkably comfortable and hideously unsettling. The spectrum of emotions you'll feel is astounding.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Read, April 8, 2008

By 

Denmon W. Westmoreland - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Hanging Woods (Hardcover)

Although this book is marketed as a young adult fiction it is by far the best book I have read this year and I am in my mid 40's. I read a lot, a book every few days, but this one stands out. It has action, intrigue and a great plot with twist that kept me reading till I finished it in one setting. I highly recommend it to any and all.