![]() Further complicating the situation is the fact that the phantom ship went down on June 7, 1884. A supposed creature aboard the Lavinia wreck in addition to emerging local lore now makes Julie’s boyfriend a bonafide believer. Matt originally dismissed Julie’s detention daymare, but too much evidence is piling up. To his horror, however, the long-lost ship is called Lavinia. He works as a diver along with his older brother at the harbor, and one of their paid dives reveals a 300-foot interlake steamship. Julie is the book’s ostensible main character, yet Matt receives a good amount of solo scenes. The ghoulish tales Victor Cowan grew up with are turning out to be true. Based on the family feud at Cheryl’s wake, though, the current Cowan patriarch knows more than he is letting on. Right now Julie is unsure if the stranger means her harm, or if he had anything to do with Cheryl’s death. ![]() He rolled in with the ominous fog, then quickly disappeared into the lake. This is clearly not the case since Cheryl died during Julie’s first encounter with a menacing but handsome man in a peacoat. The coroner also determines she has been dead for over a month. The story’s first victim, Cheryl, somehow drowns on land while inside her own car. To help keep it simple, the most significant places are around the lake. ![]() This near constant name dropping of locations is likely appealing to Duluthians, whereas outsiders will be overwhelmed. Julie and her friends get lost in the fog after shopping in the Miller Hill district, while boyfriend Matt Sinclair goes diving for a sunken ship off the lakeside shore of Park Point. As other characters are introduced, Watery Grave becomes a partial tour guide of the port city. There is no readily available information about Joseph Trainor - are they using a pseudonym here, and/or were these Twilight books their only published works? - but it is clear from the writing that the author is at least familiar with Duluth as well as deep diving. This sinister daydream reeks of a Freddy Krueger-like boogeyman’s doing, although Watery Grave predates A Nightmare on Elm Street by a year. She soon comes to her senses and, like Joan and the other students present, starts to question her state of mind. The mysterious word then turns to blood and bleeds all over Julie. In detention, the pages of Julie’s Spanish textbook go blank, with only one word left behind in big red letters: LAVINIA. Sadly for the main character, her terror has only just begun. While stuck in after-school detention with English teacher Miss Joan Cowan, Cheryl and Debbie’s cousin, something weird and frightening happens to Julie. Truancy is out of character for a student like Julie, but the dean of women is not lenient. ![]() The story kicks off with 16-year-old Julie Monroe sneaking back into school after cutting class with her two best friends, Cheryl and Debbie Cowan. Nevertheless, it is safe to say the following events never happened in Duluth, Minnesota. Watery Grave does something uncommon in the world of YA horror the story is set in a real place as opposed to a fictional (and creepily named) town. In the first of Trainor’s two offerings, an unrelenting evil rises from a lake and targets a wealthy family. Multiple authors contributed to Twilight between ’82 and ’87, and Joseph Trainor was one of the few who wrote more than one book. As Grady Hendrix wrote in Paperbacks From Hell, this was the decade where “horror hit its stride with a hungry teenage audience.” Dell Publishing’s own part in the prevailing trend included Twilight: Where Darkness Begins, a collection of self-contained books that helped pave the way for Fear Street and other similar series. The 1980s was a pivotal time for horror fiction, especially for young adults.
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