THE STORY: Fuel the feral, dynamic, native smarts of forty-year-old Erin Skidmore, a sexy survivor of an abusive marriage, with the arrival of the shadowy but self-righteous religious men of The Garden of Paradise Cultural Oasis, recently ensconced in the same strip mall, next door to her property management office, and Erin’s naturally high octane engine revs into Mach 5. She seduces her former employee and current sex-puppy, twenty-three-year-old nighttime security guard Steve Enloe (never just “Steve") into roping his current girlfriend, Erin, a seemingly innocent, will-o-the-wisp Kinko’s girl, into a scheme to investigate and possibly vandalize the “so-called church,” an organization that may or may not believe in violence to promote their ends. Nothing is as it seems, and the unfathomable mysteries of God, religion, bigotry, suspicion, love and sexual rapture constellate all three strivers into doing and not doing what they believe is right. Into truth-telling and lying to get what they want. Into revealing and hiding their true fears and feelings. Until a pregnancy, a longstanding betrayal and a cataclysmic act of real terrorism overtake them and change everything for everyone, leaving in the wake no clear path to follow.
“…paints an unnervingly acute portrait of a privileged nation…what Maclachlan puts his finger neatly upon with this funny-until-it-gets-scary play is the trouble that can arise when competing value systems clash in a culture that insists on the equality of everyone’s beliefs.” —Washington City Paper.
“…ABYSS’ fast-paced, dark humor has many laughs and some pointed insights…MacLachlan has a keen sense of how people’s morals and motivations can be skewed, of how peer pressure can erode one’s values and also of how average people can be manipulated to dehumanize their neighbors…” —CurtainUp.
