From Central California’s exquisite and wild Cotoni Coast Dairies National Monument—one of the most sensitive biodiversity hotspots in North America—comes a magical tale at the sizzling intersection of eco-thriller and Romantasy: Incident at Cougar Creek.
” . . . Mary Flodin’s prose pulses with authenticity, from vivid environmental detail to her nuanced portrayal of trauma and resilience. Both a gripping page-turner and a profound call for empathy toward people and planet. Highly recommended.” —The International Review of Books.
In a land where nature is unraveling, a brutal murder and a supernatural secret bring together Fish and Wildlife Officer Colin Dawson—an Army Ranger veteran struggling with PTSD—and Kumeyaay Native Delfina Cuero, a beautiful and intelligent young woman with a secret trauma of her own. Will Colin and Delfina be able to rise above their personal wounds and trust one another in time to stop the monster who murdered Delfina’s mother and heal the evil afoot in their sacred land?
Along with Delfina’s two-spirit cousin, as well as the county’s first African American forensic pathologist, a divergent teen from the nearby organic farm, FBI agent George Chen, a California cowboy, a rogue ICE agent, and a US Marshal—Colin and Delfina embark on a quest to catch her mother’s killer and protect the new Cougar Creek Coast Ranch National Monument from environmental exploitation and destruction.
As their relationship evolves, Colin and Delfina confront their past traumas while navigating the complexities of the post pandemic world, the rapid intensification of climate change, a community recovering from a recent devastating wildfire, fentanyl trafficking, and the horror of MMIW (missing and murdered Indigenous women).
Colin’s Inner Warrior—that part of himself he has tried to put to rest since his Army Ranger days—is called back into action when he realizes that Delfina is in grave danger: she is being hunted by the same predator who killed her mother.
In the face of existential challenges, Colin and Delfina must make a choice: whether to retreat as beasts into the vanishing wilderness, or summon the courage to choose hope and remain human in order to defend the world they love.
Their answer can be found in this magical tale at the fiery intersection of Ecological Thriller and Romantasy: Incident at Cougar Creek.
Mary’s newest ecological thriller, Incident at Cougar Creek, was published on October 29, 2025. Watch our Facebook, Instagram, Xtwitter, LinkedIn, and blog posts for updates!
Books available in Kindle, Paperback and Hardcover from Bookshop Santa Cruz, Amazon, and Paper Angel Press.
Reviews of Incident at Cougar Creek
*”Mary Flodin’s Incident at Cougar Creek is much more than your average mystery; it’s an eco-thriller with a dash of mythology, a profound love story, and a sensitive exploration of trauma that leaves you thinking long after the final page. As someone who appreciates a story with both a breakneck pace and a beating heart, I found this book offered a genuinely satisfying balance.
The story drops us immediately into the deep end with a truly shocking opening: a California Fish and Wildlife Officer, Colin Dawson, discovers a dying mountain lion that, in its final moments, transforms into a naked woman. Colin, a former Army Ranger grappling with the demons of combat-related PTSD, is instantly thrown into an impossible homicide investigation. The professional side of him records his observations, noting the bizarre arrow wound and the evidence of a high-tech killer. The sympathetic side, however, is overwhelmed, whispering, ‘I’m sorry this happened to you,’ as he gently closes the victim’s eyes.
Flodin’s brilliance is in weaving these seemingly disparate elements together. The sheer shock of the initial scene is tempered by the profound pain carried by the main characters. The author sensitively portrays those dealing with unresolved PTSD, showing how past horrors can feel as immediate as the present. This thread of trauma and resilience is central, as Colin and the victim’s daughter, Delfina, are two ‘wounded souls, hunted by monsters, bound by destiny’.
The book also shines a light on crucial social and environmental issues. The stunning, fragile backdrop of the California Central Coast is essential to the plot, not just scenery, revealing the ‘urgent need for conservation of wild California’s fragile central coast ecosystem’. This is truly an eco-thriller, where the threat to the land is as palpable as the threat to human life. You feel the setting, especially in moments like when Colin senses ‘the arrow that killed Ramona still moving through the landscape, shredding and tearing into the soul of this sacred land’. And for those who enjoy the fantastical, the supernatural mystery is wonderfully executed, hinting at deeper Indigenous mythology. Early in the book, the transformation scene is described with captivating intensity: ‘Frozen in horror, Delfina watched Ramona shape shift-subtly at first, then all at once. The transformation was so radical, so grotesque, that Delfina could not doubt what she saw, although her mind would not make sense of it’.
Incident at Cougar Creek is an intricately plotted, deeply engaging murder mystery and love story, packed with action and intrigue.
This book is a must-read for fans of eco-thrillers and those who enjoy fast-paced mysteries with a mythological twist. It will especially resonate with readers who appreciate complex, nuanced characters dealing with PTSD and the journey toward healing. Finally, audiences interested in themes of Indigenous people’s concerns and conservation of wild lands will find this a timely and meaningful read. If you like authors who blend genres—say, a touch of Tana French’s psychological depth with the environmental urgency of Carl Hiaasen, you should absolutely pick up this book.” —Reviewed by Kathryn Dare
*”Incident at Cougar Creek is a masterfully woven eco-thriller that fuses mystery, romance, and mythology against the haunting beauty of California’s central coast. Mary Flodin’s prose pulses with authenticity, from vivid environmental detail to her nuanced portrayal of trauma and resilience. Both a gripping page-turner and a profound call for empathy toward people and planet. Highly recommended.” —The International Review of Books.
*I’m a Licensed Professional Counselor, specializing in PTSD. In Incident at Cougar Creek, I found that the author accurately and sensitively portrays characters who are dealing with unresolved PTSD resulting from the trauma of military combat and rape. This eco-thriller has plenty of page turning, entertaining, edge-of-your-seat twists and surprises, but also reveals the urgent need for conservation of wild California’s fragile central coast ecosystem, and elevates serious concerns about missing and murdered Indigenous people. A timely and meaningful read. — Rachel Pfotenhauer MA, LPC
*Incident at Cougar Creek is an intricately-plotted, deeply-engaging murder mystery and love story that will compel the reader’s attention from the story’s beginning right to its very end. The story is set in California’s central coast, with excursions to both Southern California and San Francisco. As a former Santa Cruz County Supervisor who represented that county’s North Coast for twenty years, I can testify to how profoundly and powerfully the mystery and majesty of this under-appreciated part of the California coastline has been made into an essential element of the gripping trajectory of Flodin’s story. — Gary A. Patton, Santa Cruz County Supervisor (1975-1995)
*Incident at Cougar Creek, the latest novel by local author Mary Flodin, was another page turner for me. Like her last one, Fruit of the Devil, it wove environmentalism, social justice, political leanings and activities of certain factions, hard-working farmers, government policy, and more into a story wrapped around the murder of an indigenous woman. Or was it a cougar? Or both? Ask Carlos Casteñeda. Like in any novel I’ve ever enjoyed reading, there are unpredictable story lines that sometimes conflict and sometimes support each other as they drew me into deep concern for the characters and resolution of their fight for truth and justice. And contempt for the disgusting bad guys. Like any good story, right when I thought I had it figured out, it twisted in a direction that made me think again. Of course, two of the main characters have a tortured love affair that I could hardly stand how long it took them to express. You know it’s coming, but there are unexpected complications right at critical moments. Jeez! Just make love already so I can get some sleep! Having transformed from a degenerate teenager into a respectable businessman myself, the shape-shifting that occurs in Incident at Cougar Creek was believable. The only thing I didn’t quite understand, living here where the story is set, is Mary’s choice of what to name accurately, what to give an alias. There’s a fine line to walk when protecting the identity of real people and places. I get it. For whom I hope will be throngs of readers, it works. For me, I just kept wanting to stand up and shout, “Wait! This is Santa _____! — Ray Newkirk, Green Builder
*Mary Flodin’s new book, Incident at Cougar Creek, is a fast-paced cli-fi-eco thriller full of action and intrigue that made me want to keep turning the page. Colin, a California Fish and Wildlife Officer who previously fought in Afghanistan, encounters the perplexing circumstances of a Native American woman’s death in Central California’s coastal outback. Flodin’s Incident at Cougar Creek delivers an exciting narrative full of twists, turns, and tense chase scenes threaded through with a moving love story, as well as vivid setting elements. At the novel’s close, I was left with the thought that crimes against fellow humans aren’t disconnected from crimes against the environment. Solving the crimes in the novel required collective effort, as does the effort to view nature as something more than an object for personal gain. —Anna Citrino, author of Stories We Didn’t Tell
*A book written with an artist’s eye for visual detail takes you on a magical, thrilling journey that explores love, natural history, Native American culture and myth, and so much more. You’ll enjoy every page. A captivating read. — Nancy Marquez, author
*This easy read allows the reader to enjoy and learn about the coastal mountains of California. I enjoyed the mix of romance, murder, fantasies–all of it. Wanted to keep reading—Clare W
*If literary genres were tools, Mary Flodin’s new book would make a fabulous Swiss Army Knife. Therein lies the beauty of the book and its weakness. Incident at Cougar Creek is a romance, a fantasy, a murder mystery, an exploration of Native culture, and an ecological tract. The story explores the struggles of a veteran with PTSD who has to solve a murder while becoming romantically involved with a Native woman who has supernatural gifts. While developing these plot lines, Flodin explores a Native culture and shares her concerns of the impacts of humanity on the environment, and particularly the impacts of climate change. The strength of this Swiss Army novel is that Flodin develops each of these themes well, and each is worthy of the reader’s attention. If there is a weakness to this novel, it lies in Flodin’s attempt to interweave all of these themes into one story, as various elements slow the flow of the plot. Flodin’s love of the environment is apparent throughout the book, and her descriptions of the coastal California mountains are vivid and immerse this reader in the surroundings. This is where the book really shines. If you are a fan of romance novels, fantasies, murder mysteries or environmental literature, you will find something of merit if you read Incident at Cougar Creek. —Stephen
A gripping eco-romantasy set along California’s scenic central coast! Incident at Cougar Creek begins with a murder and is artfully resolved in a gripping cli-romantasy. —T. Norris
Themes
Environmental Protection and Climate Change:
Social Justice and Indigenous Rights:
Healing from Trauma:
Substance Abuse and other Addictive Behaviors
The novel confronts the devastating consequences of substance abuse and other addictive behaviors, which often trap individuals, their loved ones in tragic patterns of codependency, shame, domestic abuse, sexual and emotional abuse, financial exploitation and trafficking.
Violent Conflict, Militarism, and War
Love and Relationships amidst Adversity:
The heart of the page-turning murder mystery revolves around the evolving relationship between Colin and Delfina, a love forged through shared passion for a sacred land and mutual struggle against external threats.
Humanity’s Choice in the Face of Existential Threats:
The book poses a profound question about whether humans will retreat into numbing, dehumanizing alienation in the face of the death nature and de-construction of decency, or will we find the courage to defend the world we love when faced with existential challenges such as environmental collapse, mass extinction, and theoretically even sudden human transformation into beasts due to climate-induced mutations.
Just Released!
Incident at Cougar Creek is a bold romantic eco-thriller that blends climate fiction with mystery, western adventure, and paranormal romance. Set along Central California’s wild coast, the novel follows a Fish and Wildlife warden and a Native woman from the Kumeyaay Nation as they uncover a dangerous web of crime, corruption, and hidden local history.
Built on the bones and tropes of classic murder mysteries and police procedurals, the story weaves together urgent contemporary issues—missing and murdered Indigenous women, fentanyl trafficking, extremist militias, a rogue ICE agent, Russian oligarchs, and an international semiconductor software theft—with the drama of personal healing, steamy romance, and the enduring power of nature. Along the way, readers will encounter a cast as diverse as the coastal landscape itself: a wounded warrior haunted by PTSD, a two-spirit Native character named Hawk, as well as a groundbreaking Black forensic pathologist, and divergent teens searching for meaning in a fractured world. Surfing, mountain biking, organic farming, and the beauty of a sacred coastal wilderness provide the backdrop, while shapeshifters and ancient cave paintings add a layer of the uncanny.
With mountain lions, cowboys, law enforcement, and endearing animal companions, INCIDENT AT COUGAR CREEK delivers both thrills and love. It’s a timely, entertaining, magical, and heartwarming tale from the Left Coast.