The Trashman’s Daughter is a commercial fiction novel set in current West Virginia that explores the destructive impact that hate, covetousness and stupidity have on both the perpetrator and the innocent.
At his wealthy uncle’s urging, Jerry Ray, a young engineer, accepts the job of managing Ridge Landfill in Tyler County. His cousin, the uncle’s only daughter, recently died in mysterious circumstances at the nearby Burgess Goat farm-cheese operation. Jerry’s new job will connect him into the area’s ethos and its leaders. The hope is that interaction will allow Jerry to form an opinion on whether the police report is correct that his cousin’s death was the result of an accident or if it was murder.
Schemes and conspiracies proliferate in The Trashman’s Daughter, starting with the discovery of a dead infant in the trash. That death involves Jerry Ray with a mysterious professor. He soon suspects the professor’s cleaning lady has kidnapped the recluse to torture him into revealing account passwords in order for her to raid the elderly man’s savings. Illegal dumping of hazardous chemicals and a plot to install bombs in fourteen propane railcar tankers by the man Jerry suspects murdered his cousin add to the explosive climax of The Trashman’s Daughter.