Walking the familiar beat on Ballard Avenue with her partner, Katherine Murphy, Seattle Police Officer Grace Stevens walks through time as well, recalling her special childhood game of sidewalk hopscotch that she once played on this same street—a game with self-constructed, secret rules that she would never break. Grace’s longing for unbroken rules and for a kind of perfect balance is just that—a longing that can survive only in her inner world. For beyond the known streets of her childhood, beyond the brawls in fishermen’s taverns, beyond the domestic travails and routine calls that fill her working days, Grace is haunted by the shadowy presence of a rapist. As she pursues this elusive figure, she will find herself far from the streets of her Ballard neighborhood.
In Lowen Clausen’s newest novel, Third & Forever, Grace Stevens delves into the dark world of sexual compulsion and begins a search that strips away layers of conformity, pretense, and expectation so that she must see herself and her society anew. Circling from her neighborhood beat to the University of Washington campus and on to steamy Baton Rouge and back, she will discover that some athletic stars are given special protections—especially those playing big-time college football—the money-makers for their universities’ athletic machines. Despite a series of near misses, Grace moves steadily toward unmasking a dangerous stalker. And along the way she finds her own identity and purpose transformed by her encounter with her family’s black roots in the South.
Lowen served on the Seattle police force from 1969 to 1982 and spent a number of those years working Seattle’s skid road section of First Avenue, the street that gave the title to his first novel. During those same years, Lowen studied literature and writing at the University of Washington and went on to become a business owner in Seattle’s Ballard district. In the early 1990's, Lowen and his wife Pat Kunze bought a home in St. Paul, Nebraska, where Lowen, had been born and lived until the family relocated to Seattle. Lowen now divides his time between Nebraska and Washington. THIRD and FOREVER is his third novel.
Lowen’s debut novel, FIRST AVENUE was named a Booksense 76 Pick. He is also the only two-time recipient of the Friends of Mystery Spotted Owl Award to date.
