The Town That Died

Shortly before Martin Lindstrom was born, a TV news crew from 60 Minutes came to his hometown, Chinook Oregon to document the collapse of the timber industry. After a few days of documenting how the shutdown of all the local saw mills had pushed unemployment back to levels not seen since the 1930s, they filed a primetime report called “The Town that Died.”
Thirty-five years later, Chinook Oregon is as beautiful and depressed as ever. Each year nearly a million tourists continue to visit its beautiful beaches and rainforests without noticing that half of the Main Street shops are boarded up, opiate usage is rampant, and housing foreclosures fill the local paper.
Nor has much changed for Martin Lindstrom. For a few years he achieved his childhood dreams of escaping the small town he always hated. He became a successful Wall Street lawyer. He was living his dreams until a scandal at Martin's New York law firm forced him to return home. Now, instead of defending rich bankers, money launderers and white-collar crooks, he’s handling a mind-numbing succession of drunk driving cases, divorces and property foreclosures.
Hope seems as scarce as the dwindling salmon runs until Lindstrom’s former high school classmate and successful venture capitalist Ned Everett returns to town. Everett plans to revitalize the town by building a new sawmill and in the process offers Martin a job with his Seattle investment firm.
But the town's hope for a revival and Martin's chances of escaping go up in smoke when the U.S. Forest Service starts investigating a series of forest fires. They uncover a plot by prominent local citizens and logging companies to get lucrative salvage logging contracts by setting the fires. A local logger, who is accused of setting some of the fires, is arrested for brutally murdering a Forest Ranger investigating the case. Some locals and cable news hosts lionize the escaped killer, saying he is being framed by the Feds for trying to fight excessive environmental regulations. Martin wants nothing to do with the case, but is forced to get involved when federal investigators arrest his father for helping the accused murderer escape.

To solve this crime, Martin must dive deep into the poverty, environmental problems and anger afflicting many small towns if he hopes to keep himself and his father out of prison. He must solve an environmental mystery if he wants to unravel a criminal conspiracy.

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