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Grandfather and Grandson
The Corridor follows a grandfather with vast knowledge of the Blue Ridge Mountains who sets out on a mission alongside his teenage grandson to document a wildlife corridor threatened by a resort development. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I really wanted to do a reverse mentorship piece. I live in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and I see all the time grandfathers showing grandchildren the nature that surrounds us here. I thought it would be fun to explore a different type of relationship. One where Ellias, the grandson, takes exception to Richard, the grandfather’s, lack of motivation on saving the wildlife corridor, even when he has economic reasons, property values, and the knowledge to save it. This shift happens not only in Ellias’ familiarity with social media and technology but also in motivating Richard to do something. This is a wonderful dynamic between grandfather and grandson.
Richard’s emotional arc is so understated but powerful. How did you approach writing a character whose growth happens through small shifts rather than dramatic revelations?
That is something I like to present while writing. I think it’s important for writers to engage their readers by not presenting the obvious but to deliver it in such a way that it’s believable, and hopefully they understand this the way you did.
Nature writing can sometimes overpower character, but here, landscape and psychology feel inseparable. How did you balance the two?
That’s a great question. And the answer is that I see daily the subtle balance between people and nature. I see a family of black bears crossing the street, and people stop their cars, being very respectful to let them pass. Pulling their phones out recording the encounter. It truly is magical, and while writing, I can’t help but bring that perspective. And I’m happy that you noticed.
If Richard and Eli met again ten years later, what do you think each would have taught the other by then?
Ah, you are skipping ahead. The Corridor is the first book in a 6-book (novelette) series…stay tuned.
The Corridor
The Corridor, by William Klenk, follows Richard, a solitary grandfather whose knowledge of the Blue Ridge mountains is rooted in decades of bodily attention, and Eli, his withdrawn teenage grandson, who arrives carrying family trouble and a school assignment. What begins as a quiet stay in the mountains becomes a shared effort to document a wildlife corridor threatened by a resort development. Richard brings memory, fieldcraft, and lived intimacy with the land; Eli brings maps, cameras, data, and a stubborn belief that proof can still matter. Together, they learn that seeing is not always enough: sometimes the world needs evidence before it will listen.
I was drawn most to the book’s restraint. Its emotional engine is not built from melodrama but from small exchanges: a repaired hinge, a shared trail, a laptop turned across a kitchen table, a handshake that changes weight by the end. Richard’s interior life feels especially strong because the prose lets his certainty erode slowly, like weather on stone. The book understands that aging is not only a loss; it can also be a late apprenticeship in humility. Eli, meanwhile, never becomes a convenient symbol of youth or technology. He’s wounded, practical, observant, and quietly brave in the unflashy way of someone deciding to care again.
The book’s central tension between presence and documentation was entertaining. Richard knows the land because he has inhabited it; Eli protects it because he can translate it into a language that institutions recognize. It doesn’t worship data or romanticize intuition. It lets both be partial, both necessary. The environmental stakes give the plot shape, but the deeper subject is intergenerational repair: the fragile corridor between people, not just animals, and the work required to keep it open.
Readers who like environmental fiction, coming-of-age fiction, family drama, and nature writing will really enjoy this novel. And readers who like quiet, character-driven stories about land, kinship, and moral attention will find a lot to reflect on. I would place The Corridor near the gentler, contemplative side of Barbara Kingsolver, especially in its belief that ecology and family systems echo one another. It’s a brief book, but it has a patient pulse and a clean moral weather.
Pages: 25
