The Little White Trip - A Night in the Pines by Peter Joseph Gallagher is definitely "a trip," as the author wrote on the first page of the copy he sold to me in person back in 2007 at Venice Beach, California. "One of the first to take this trip," is what he wrote, followed by a thank you.
I didn't buy the book because of the back cover description, which starts, "They say that killing with a knife is the sex of murder." I can't even sit through an entire horror movie, so serial killer stories don't usually make my reading list, especially ones that mix murder and sex, which is what I thought about when I judged the book--at first--by its cover.
I also did not purchase The Little White Trip because I was intrigued by Matthew Thomas' forward, which explains that Peter Gallagher was, in fact, the ghostwriter commissioned to tell Thomas' true story, but who Thomas realized should get credit for it as the writer in the end. (Good for you, Matthew Thomas!)
I think, at the time, that I was intrigued enough to buy the book because of the author himself (was it the author, or was it Matthew Thomas?), sitting there on the Venice Beach boardwalk hawking his writing amidst all the other street vendors. ...I can picture myself on that blanket someday.
Anyway, the book went into storage with the rest of my life's belongings shortly thereafter, where it stayed for several years whilst I traipsed around the country like a gyspy looking for something...until I found it, then reunited myself with my belongings, unpacked the boxes, and began to undertake my newest mission: to read every single book I own (and then some).
So, I'm not going to give away the whole story but The Little White Trip is about a group of friends who win a snowboarding trip at their high school grad night, then go up into the mountains of Arizona for that haunting and hellish experience. (Snowboarding? Who knew? I love snowboarding.)
Here's an excerpt: "...the little girls fingernails had been peeled back with something like a can opener." Yikes. I don't want to give it all away of course but I will say that I read the book cover-to-cover and it totally 100% got me. I didn't expect the ending at all. So that's all I'll say about that. All in all, I think The Little White Trip is creative and well-written with a good story to boot. Therefore, I recommend it. Good job, Matt and Peter.
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