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Larry Williams
Growing up in Montgomery County, Indiana, Williams had long been intrigued with the area around Shades State Park. While an undergraduate student at Wabash College, he spent his summer months at t...view moreGrowing up in Montgomery County, Indiana, Williams had long been intrigued with the area around Shades State Park. While an undergraduate student at Wabash College, he spent his summer months at the park maintaining trails. He became intrigued with the history of the park and its surroundings.
Williams and his wife used to canoe on Sugar Creek with friends back in the 1970’s and still canoe and camp out near Deere’s Mill Bridge and Pine Hills Forest Preserve each summer with their children and grandchildren.
Local lore has always intrigued him and place names such as Devil’s Backbone, Devil’s Punchbowl, and Shades of Death heightened his fascination with the area. Several years ago Williams acquired a copy of a book titled Shades of Death and Other Poems written by Dr. Joseph P. Russell and published posthumously by his family in 1901. Dr. Russell, who died in 1893, served as a family physician in Waveland and the surrounding area for over half a century. Included along with poems in the book is “Shades of Death” purported by Dr. Russell to be a true narrative.
Russell wrote that Devil’s Backbone, Shades of Death (now known as Shades State Park), and Pine Hills serve well to perpetuate traditional superstition in regard to these sequestered localities. One passage in his book refers to a superstitious dread that the Devil had been buried there and nothing was left of him except the backbone which was petrified into solid gray and white limestone.
Taking literary license, Williams created a fictitious small city, named it Somerset, and geographically placed it where the actual town of Waveland is located. Vengeance Is Mine, his second novel, is set in Somerset and is a sequel to Devil’s Backbone.view less