Title: Blue crystal
First published: 1993
Description: From Philip Lee Williams, the author of six critically acclaimed novels, comes a riveting psychological thriller set deep in the secret heart of Kentucky cave country. Blue Crystal exposes the evil and chaos lurking just beneath the surface of a picture-perfect rural town. In a world ripped apart by sudden and random violence, a man will struggle to survive, to find rebirth and redemption in the rising waters of an underground hell. Meet Sam Preston, the owner of Blue Crystal Cave, a man held hostage by its tragic history. Local legend whispers of a priceless hoard, hidden, buried, beckoning. But Sam lives with the grisly truth that years ago seventeen children were buried alive when the walls of the cave collapsed. Haunted by memories of the accident and his father's subsequent suicide, Sam tries to escape the past by going underground, into the winding channels of Blue Crystal Cave. Yet his obsessions are consuming him and endangering his growing relationship with Mary Beth.

Enter Bobby Drake, an ex-convict, and his band of misfits, Clay, Misty, Hermie, and Christiann. Irresistibly drawn to the cave by rumors of riches, they trap Sam and Mary Beth during a raging storm that threatens to flood the town. With water rushing in and time running out, Sam and Mary Beth find themselves lost in the utter darkness, being relentlessly pursued - but is it by their abductors or by shadows of the past? With its driving, urgent prose, cinematic vividness, menacing atmosphere, and lightning speed, Blue Crystal is an action-packed and action-powered novel of suspense. But the cave is also an internal landscape of psychic terror. In succinct, often surprising, and sharply observed portraits, Philip Lee Williams masterfully explores the inner lives of his characters in a death-defying spiritual odyssey.
Subjects: Fiction, Caves, Kentucky, fiction
Places: Kentucky
LC classification: PS3573.I45535 B57 1993