Maynard's House

Amazon: At its heart, this is the story of a young bedeviled Vietnam war vet with issues, Austin Fletcher, who is willed a small house deep in the woods of northern Maine by a fellow soldier and confidante, Maynard Whittier, killed in action by a wayward mortar shell. Austin--"a sailboat awaiting a breeze"--makes the trip for his new home. The landscape is an intoxicating blend of claustrophobic interiors and endless frozen wastelands. Little by little, the mysterious force in the house asserts itself until neither Austin nor the reader is exactly sure what is in his mind and what is real. Raucher plays to his strength here: "A man can be crazy only if there's someone around to tell him that such is the case." Austin's disturbing isolation is well managed and chillingly realized. And just when our hero's had enough and is ready to quit the place, a blizzard arrives and the real haunting begins.