Winner of a 2025 IPPY Independent Publisher Book Award: West-Pacific Best Regional Fiction Don Karlsson has lived on his family’s Oregon homestead for most of his life. The timber on his land is his greatest asset—planted and replenished by his hand, maintained with his labor and sweat, and harvested for income at his discretion. After a new species of voles is discovered living in those trees, authorities step in to protect the creatures, and Karlsson fights back. No one can tell him what to do with his property. He enlists the help of his children: Billy, a local who understands his father’s connection to the land; Stacy, a fierce attorney from Boston determined to represent her father’s interests—even if they go against her own; and the beloved and sensitive youngest, Zeke, who organizes local environmentalists to make sure his father does not win. The impending confrontation engulfs the community and competing interests—local businesses and political groups, infiltrators seeking profit—with the Karlsson family at the center, still trying to reconcile the loss of Don’s wife and their mother, Marlene. Tempers flare, desperate acts are taken, and the courtroom battle spills over into protests and riots, leading to a riveting and stunning conclusion. AEGOLIUS CREEK leaves readers contemplating our ties to place and family, how we strive for worth and meaning, and ultimately, what—if anything—we can claim as our own. “Aegolius Creek is a study of entities at war with each other: humankind at war with nature, nature at war with itself, and a population fighting to find the balance between progress, tradition, and conservation. The story takes place in Oregon’s abundant forests, where logging companies wrangle for more footage, environmentalists lobby for control, and homesteaders dig in to protect their ownership rights. “Thorp’s novel is distinctive in its layering of facts about the geography, …shifts into Don’s perspective, and a deep bench of side characters brought richly to life… A surprising and moving account of a man’s connection to his home.” — Kirkus Reviews " Thorp’s characters are memorable, but most striking is the story’s setting, which emerges as a character in and of itself, a symbol for nature’s power and its significance in humankind’s survival. Don Karlsson is crafted in realistic shades—a character who readers will dislike at times, root for at others, and, above all, understand as a man fighting to preserve his way of life while suffering devastating consequences for the methods he chooses.” — BookLife from Publishers Weekly “Micah Thorp crafts a hard-hitting saga rooted in a sense of Oregon community. Readers exposed to these events will find any preconceptions of Oregon’s small towns and residents shaken as elder Don Karlsson’s future, and fights to protect the land, emerge within and outside of family… Packed with encounters that emerge from the force of divergent opinions, Aegolius Creek is a powerful story that will appeal beyond Oregon’s borders.”— D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review "Micah Thorp crafts a hard-hitting saga rooted in a sense of Oregon community. Readers exposed to these events will find any preconceptions of Oregon’s small towns and residents shaken as elder Don Karlsson’s future, and fights to protect the land, emerge within and outside of family… Packed with encounters that emerge from the force of divergent opinions, Aegolius Creek is a powerful story that will appeal beyond Oregon’s borders." — Diane Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review "Thorp’s novel is distinctive in its layering of facts about the geography, the aforementioned shifts into Don’s perspective, and a deep bench of side characters brought richly to life... A surprising and moving account of a man’s connection to his home." — Kirkus Reviews "In a market flooded with “land novels” that treat setting as postcard, Aegolius Creek treats it as contested ground, both literally and morally. Whether you read it for its generational sweep, its layered environmental subtext, or simply for the pleasure of well-made sentences, this is independent publishing proving it can handle big themes without losing its nerve." — Alan Parry,  The Broken Spine Micah Thorp is a physician and writer in Portland, Oregon. His first novel, Uncle Joe’ s Muse, won a 2022 Next Generation Indie Book Award and a Foreword Indies Book of the Year Award. A sequel, Uncle Joe’ s Senpai, was published in 2023. His writing has been published in Cleaver Magazine, Fictional Cafe and Blind Corner.