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IN THE SHADOW OF THE PLAGUE is an environmental and family saga set in the Eugene area of Western Oregon. Delbert Killian is a hardy, opinionated, builder and landlord of seventy years who has a bisexual girlfriend half his age, is in the middle of divorcing his latest wife, and still chops his own firewood. Delbert has been designated executor of a distant relative's trust, which consists of ten square miles of timber along the edge of the Willamette National Forest. He is instructed to get the land accepted into the National Forest, if possible; if not, to log it and distribute the proceeds among some twenty beneficiaries, who include most of Delbert's extended family. The wife he is divorcing, Sandra, picks up the narrative in chapter 4, and thereafter Delbert narrates alternate chapters with Jason, one of his sons; with Laralee, Jason's girlfriend; and with Herman, Sandra's gangster boyfriend. While the beneficiaries pressure Delbert to log the land and distribute the money, he develops a plan to help the residents of Blue Blood Creek, an unincorporated village located on trust land, to incorporate and buy their homes, which would in turn pay off debt that blocks the inclusion of the trust lands into the National Forest. A physical assault on Delbert leads into a subplot involving Herman and his enforcer, Tiny, who is inadvertently murdered. Delbert loses his girlfriend, Lucy, to his niece, Florence, a relationship he ultimately blesses by presiding over their marriage.
