For David Lafferty, author of A Place of Shadows, books were a crucial part of his childhood growing up with a mother who had health problems. “I’ve always just loved, loved, loved books,” he says. And taking care of his mother “didn’t leave a whole lot of time for normal kid stuff,” so books from a wide range of genres became Lafferty’s escape.

He began writing his own stories in elementary school and continued through adulthood, finding that his job as a C-5 and C-17 loadmaster in the Air Force Reserve was ideal for a writer: “Not only did that enable me to travel the world and experience firsthand a variety of things that 95% of people never get to, but long flights in the dead of night provided me with a lot of time to write,” he says. Ultimately, he hoped that “someday I could write a story that was an escape for some other kid.”

Now retired from the service and living in Dixon, California, with what he describes as “the world’s most mellow goldendoodle,” Lafferty also sees writing for young readers as a way of giving back. He cites J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter as the series that drove him to write novels for a teen audience. Watching young readers get caught up in a fictional world is a delight and reminds him of one of the best parts of creating stories for children: “There’s more of a willingness to accept things anyone else would write off or scoff at,” he says.

Though Lafferty has traveled the world and brings many of those experiences to his storytelling, it was a camping trip in Mendocino that gave him the inspiration for A Place of Shadows. “I just started thinking about what a wonderful setting the Northern California coast is,” he says. The story of Ben Wolf, a teenage boy with second sight who moves into an unsettling old house, grew from there.

Lafferty’s atmospheric novel draws its inspiration from more than just the landscape. Once he established the premise and the setting, “it sort of wrote itself in a lot of ways,” he says. Horror fans will detect allusions that reflect the influence of Lafferty’s childhood tradition of watching monster movies with his father on Friday nights. An interest in the uncanny carried over into Lafferty’s reading habits as well. “I’ve always enjoyed paranormal stuff,” he says, naming Stephen King as another one of his favorite writers.

A Place of Shadows is escapist in the best way, drawing the reader into the growing mystery of why Ben’s new house is haunted and how he can put the restless spirits at ease:

Even with the windows boarded up, the grounds overgrown with bracken and blackberry, and weeds forcing their way between the stone pavers of the drive, the Windward Inn was still impressive. The central part of the place was shaped in a big oval, with rectangular wings branching off to the right and left, all of it rising in three stories of gray stone. Four chimneys rose from each of the two wings, sprouting from a roof of slate tiles that swept down into wide, overhanging eaves….Towering cypress trees draped the grounds in shadow, their trunks and branches sculpted by offshore winds to loom eagerly, almost hungrily, toward us.

With the help of his paranormal abilities, Ben uncovers a decades-old local mystery that has present-day repercussions. Kirkus Reviews appreciates the result: “Investigating the history of a place is a familiar trope for horror fans, but Ben’s powers and his family’s connection to the town put a novel spin on this idea and raise the emotional stakes. With solid, action-focused prose to drive Lafferty’s story forward, the pages keep turning and the mystery continues to unfold, offering readers of all ages a genuinely engrossing yarn.”

While Lafferty, who says he’s always “just wanted to be a storyteller,” is quick to say that his protagonist is in no way meant to represent him, he acknowledges that some similarities emerged as the character developed. Like his creator, Ben Wolf “has a sense of humor and a slightly self-deprecating way of looking at things,” Lafferty says, and he “looks at the world with a certain sense of wonder.”

Like his main character, Lafferty is self-effacing. “There are writers I’ve known that take themselves very seriously. I’m not among them,” he says. A good, escapist yarn, whether in the form of a movie or a book, is his natural milieu.

For Lafferty, a great book is one in which “at the end, you close the back cover and you’re bummed out.” So Ben Wolf fans will be pleased to know that there is already a sequel in progress. It picks up two months after the events of A Place of Shadows and expands upon the type of storytelling that resonated with his readers, as reflected in the positive feedback the first book has received. “I’m trying to create a setting and a relatable character and a mood that draws people in,” he says. “It’s nice to know I wrote something that really grabs people.”

Sarah Rettger is a bookseller and writer in the Boston area.