Every good crime thriller has that pivotal moment when the stakes are sufficiently raised, the tension tightened to a near-breaking point and a character decides to take action and accept whatever consequences may arise.
Author Ken Jaworowski experienced a similar decisive now-or-never moment when it came time to begin writing what would eventually become his debut novel “Small Town Sins.” The novel — set in the fictional Locksburg, a suffocatingly small Central Pennsylvania steel town — comes out with Henry Holt and Company on Aug. 1.
Jaworowski, a culture editor and critic with the New York Times, is the author of several successful plays that have been staged in New York City, Edinburgh, Scotland, Avignon, France and elsewhere, always dreamed of publishing a novel since his college days at Shippensburg University.
“I told myself ‘I’m going to be the next Hemingway,’” Jaworowski, 55, says.
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Then the years started rapidly passing by like a gripping page-turning noir novel.
Jaworowski had professional successes in journalism — first with Bloomberg News then with the New York Times, where he’s worked for almost 20 years. Creatively, he experienced the thrills of seeing his work performed on stage to rave reviews. He continued to compose novels and even had a few promising nibbles from agents on drafts, but Jaworowski’s dream of publishing a novel eluded him, like some mythical fish that never takes the bait.
In the early days of the COVID-19 lockdowns, Jaworowski sat down at his writing desk once again.
“I said, ‘This is it. This is the last time. If I can’t get this published, I’m not going to keep wasting two or three years writing a novel,’ ” says Jaworowski, of Princeton Junction, New Jersey.
Around the same time, Jaworowski took his daughter on a tour of Pennsylvania colleges. Recalling his own college years at Shippensburg University, he decided Central Pennsylvania was the perfect setting for a crime novel that readers could relate to.
Seven weeks later “Small Town Sins” was written. Three weeks after that his agent sold it to Henry Holt and Company.
Locked in Locksburg
“Small Town Sins” follows the lives of three citizens of Locksburg — a town, aptly named because Jaworoski’s characters seemed to be trapped there, unable to make an escape — as they struggle against the deadening doldrums of small-town life and search for something greater than themselves.
Nathan is a 40-something volunteer firefighter who discovers a bag of illicit money in a burning house and is trying to convince his wife that it’s their ticket out of Locksburg. Callie is a sarcastic, but caring nurse looking after a young patient whose time seems to be running out. And Andy is a recovering heroin addict battling his own demons as well as the physical manifestation of evil in the form of a child predator who he is trying to stop.
The themes of the story could all have been ripped from small town newspaper headlines. There’s opioid abuse and all its ravaging effects on society, depression — both emotional and economic — religion, corruption, abandoned houses and neglected neighborhoods and child abuse.
Jaworowski’s experiences as a playwright are put to good use with his keen eye for his characters and snappy dialog. And the author employs thrilling cliffhangers at the end of nearly every chapter, which keeps readers on the edge of their seat until the climactic conclusion.
The central Pennsylvania setting is also a character in the novel, and the ethos of its people propels the story forward.
“This was central Pennsylvania,” says Callie, the nurse, when facing a problem. “We don’t mire ourselves in complex plans here. Around here we farm and manufacture and work, then drink and sleep and wake up like we did the previous day and month and year, then start all over again. We like things straightforward.”
A writer’s training
Jaworowski grew up in Philadelphia and was an amateur boxer in his younger days. And besides an obvious link to the great noir novels and films about boxing, the sport and writing have another link that the author discovered while writing “Small Town Sins:” preparation.
“It’s all about preparation,” Jaworowski says. “For the novel, it was all about writing a great outline. And for boxing, it’s the same thing. You’ve got to train. You’ve got to work.”
Jaworowski says when he sat down to compose his early attempts at novels, he’d dive right into the writing and see where it took him.
“I’d just write, man. And those early novels seemed to wander,” Jaworowski says. “This one, I didn’t do that. I definitely plotted this one out and I think that gave me more confidence.”