Book Information
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This podiobook is complete
Erosion by Lon S. Cohen
Fiction
Click the arrow below to listen to the first episode of this free audio book:
Canyon Park is bowed down under a relentless torrent of rain. The fields are flooded, the bridges crumble and the increasingly isolated town is host to a serial killer with a grudge against the wealthy Lollo family. Slipping between a small cast of characters; the killer, the tortured policeman hiding a dark secret, the returning son, the inquisitive librarian, the boy caught between cultures.... each of these marred, struggling humans a part of the threadbare fabric of the town. Throughout the story, secrets and motivations are slowly revealed, people continue to die, and it continues to rain. -
Emily from POD People
The story is about a Native American, driven to madness by his experience growing up in the small upstate New York town of Canyon Park being discriminated, molested and ostracized. In his mind, various characters of his tribe's mythology and American popular culture vie for his soul. He terrorizes the residents of Canyon Park, murdering those he judges guilty, to punish them for their crimes against him and his ancestors. Strangely, since the killing spree began, there has been a deluge of constant rain adding to the dismal mood and hampering efforts to stop him while the resident also battle nature's fury. Under these conditions, various characters gather from places as close as the local library, to as far away as New York City, to absolve their sins and stop their beloved town from being eroded away.
All the characters are eventually stripped bare in this trying time and face their naked souls, their dark inner parts that they are afraid to see and their true selves. America's national guilt over the destruction of the Native American culture is weaved through the motivation of the characters as they struggle with the consequences of acts they committed in the past or the acts of their kin.
The Indian Boarding Schools and the Mythology of Iroquois Creation Myth were thoroughly researched and are based on fact though the setting and characters are all fictional.
Erosion by Lon S. Cohen is available in paperback from Lulu.com.
Thanks Tom Cote for his version of Amazing Grace in my last chapter. Check out his music here.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives 3.0 United States License.
Audio Quality: 
Out of 25 ratings
Narration Quality: 
Out of 25 ratings
Writing Quality:
Out of 25 ratings
Overall Rating:
Out of 25 ratings
By: rian
Hi Lon, I noticed on the first page (at lest as shown on amazon) that you had a typo in your text. It should be "lose" not "loose" i believe. "... the farmers were going to LOOSE everything that year."By: Lon S. Cohen
Sorry I haven't been on here for a while but WOW! Thanks for the comments. Much, much appreciated. I am working on something right now that I hope will be a podiobook, but I will have to see. The comments are very much appreciated. Glad you enjoyed it and thanks so much for the honest critique.By: JaneInPA
Just finished and wanted to say "thank you", for a very enjoyable listen. It was well paced and thought provoking and I would definitely recommend it. Not sure if you want commentary on the story or the tech, so I'll offer a little of both. Might just be me, but I had a little trouble keeping the names straight early on - Jerry and Gary in particular - very different visually, but aurally - not so much. Also, I thought Francine was lacking a little in character development. She was the only character that felt a little like just a plot device. The rain was a great addition - almost like another character. As for my "2 cents worth" on some of the technical issues - the episode lengths didn't bother me, since each ended naturally but I might feel differently if I had listened to it as a work in progress. When I wait a week for an episode - I'd like it to last! I liked the music, but it did compete with the narration sometimes (although it might also be my cheap little MP3 adaptor for the car radio!). I hope you're going to podiocast more of your work.
Chapters
| Title | Description | Date Created |
| Chapter 0 (1.91 MB) | In the prologue we are introduced to the killer and his first victim along with some of the voices he carries in his head. | Jun 19, 2006 |
| Chapter 1 (10.55 MB) | In this chapter we are introduced to the first of the characters whose point of view the story and the events are revealed. Carlton Williams is having lunch at the local diner with some of his companions on the police investigation team as they discuss the recent events in town. | Jun 19, 2006 |
| Chapter 2 (9.39 MB) | In this chapter we are introduced to Gary Connors, an Oneida who has been victimized by the system that was in place in Canyon Park during his youth. Gary has been hearing some strange things in his head lately. | Jun 19, 2006 |
| Chapter 3 (7.48 MB) | In this chapter Francine Miller is told that her old boyfriend, Marc Lollo is back in town. She is the librarian of Canyon park and as she goes to open up the library Detective Carlton Williams is waiting for her with some grim news about Ann Lollo, Mac's Aunt and former "customer" of the library. | Jun 19, 2006 |
| Chapter 4 (11.23 MB) | Marc Lollo comes to town for the reading of his Aunt's will. He finds that his Aunt's death was not as natural as he was told and that his home town is not the same as it used to be. | Jun 19, 2006 |
| Chapter 5 (6.89 MB) | Ralph, the local mortician finds out some interesting news about the killer and he implores his friend Detective Carlton to dig back into his past to link the serial killings to a dark event from when Carlton first came onto the police force thirty years ago. | Jun 19, 2006 |
| Chapter 6 (7.86 MB) | John, a young Oneida man caught between cultures, comes into contact with the worst of Canyon Park. At home on the reservation, his grandfather, a member of the ruling council of his clan, tells him that they must bridge the distance between Whites and Oneida to stop the constant rain. | Jun 27, 2006 |
| Chapter 7 (6.52 MB) | Marc gets into a little car trouble but luckily he runs into his old flame from high school, Francine Miller. | Jun 29, 2006 |
| Chapter 08 (8.35 MB) | In this chapter, Carlton runs into John, the Oneida youth, in his police station. Upon questioning John, Carlton gets the idea that things may not be all that they seem. Jerry pops into the office acting his usual obnoxious self when suddenly officers come to the station with bad news about the rain. | Jul 5, 2006 |
| Chapter 09 (4.17 MB) | In this chapter, Francine and Marc talk intimately in the library. | Jul 5, 2006 |
| Chapter 10 (9.42 MB) | Gary has a dream about Oprah. | Jul 12, 2006 |
| Chapter 11 (8.24 MB) | Carl comes home to find his wife and her prayer group. They pray about the rain and then Carl and Joyce talk, ending the first day in Canyon Park. It's all downhill from here... | Jul 20, 2006 |
| Chapter 12 (10.67 MB) | In this chapter, Marc Lollo finds himself in a precarious predicament while pitching in to help Jerry and Carlton with the local residents. | Aug 14, 2006 |
| Chapter 13 (4.76 MB) | Gary Connors runs away while the voices argue on about how to proceed. | Aug 14, 2006 |
| Chapter 14 (7.57 MB) | Carlton confronts Gary. | Aug 15, 2006 |
| Chapter 15 (6.81 MB) | Marc and Francine learn the dark secret about Marc's grandfather and begin putting together the pieces of the puzzle. | Sep 5, 2006 |
| Chapter 16 (9.42 MB) | Grandfather takes Marc and Francine to the reservation for a strange encounter with Oneida mythology. | Sep 5, 2006 |
| Chapter 17 (3.4 MB) | Gary runs home and leaves behind his last vestige of sanity and redemption. | Sep 5, 2006 |
| Chapter 18 (13.96 MB) | The final confrontation as the heroes travel to Gary's farm. | Sep 6, 2006 |