cea dee james

Fourteen year-old Greg Leverit was forced into a life altering move. His father accepted a job in a backwater nowhere place called River Bend, Texas. Suddenly Greg is yanked from his comfortable Culpepper, Ohio school and coterie of followers to some dog-patch, swamp-town where the kids were a bit weird. Most weird is the fact that they believed in a ridiculous story of a dangerous creature who had killed someone last year and lives in--not by--the town's lake. An elusive lake creature everyone dubs the Bog-monster is tagged with the crime, except the creature proves to be very real and very dangerous. The kids believe in it. Adults don't wish to discuss it.

Cocky Greg Leverit is no longer the cool dude with a cool girlfriend. After his move, he's a nobody with snobbish ideas. He doesn't fit into the neighborhood. He doesn't want to fit in either. His new associates include Rake, who sits behind him in class but doesn't trust him and wouldn't tell him that taking the dare Chris threw at him could mean his life; Chris, the tom-girl who has a chip on her shoulder and a secret she never shares; Lars, the mysterious newspaperman who treats his work as a shield to forget his haunted past; and Toby, the bubbly photo-journalist whose love for Lars was getting her nowhere.

Only by determination, perseverance and research could Greg learn what this creature was and how it got into the lake. This was his great chance to get a picture of it for the paper. Then he'd show people who he was and be liked by everyone. To be accepted. To be famous. To die.

This is a young adult fiction, action/mystery: A tongue-in-cheek, first person adventure narrative of Greg Leverit's summer gone awry.