Highland Park author sticks to what he knows with first novel

For Highland Park author Chris Johnson, the woods are more than a setting; they’re a place where young people discover who they are, what they value and what they’re willing to fight for.

His new novel, “In the Heart of the Woods,” published by 12 Willows Press in September, is a coming-of-age story for young adult readers and anyone who remembers the feeling of being young — and perhaps the urgency of wanting to protect the natural world around them.

Johnson works out of Chicago. As a freelance writer since 2009, his fiction and nonfiction works have appeared in The Progressive, Mother Earth News, American Forests and other outdoor-focused publications. 

As a former high school English teacher and publisher, Johnson is the author of two nonfiction books that center conservation – “This Grand and Magnificent Place: The Wilderness Heritage of the White Mountains” (2006) and “Forests for the People: The Story of America’s Eastern National Forests” (2013).

His inspiration to publish his first two books, as well as his novel, comes from “a love of the outdoors and of nature,” he said, as well as from reading John Muir and Henry David Thoreau. Johnson had the idea to write his novel in 2023, and it has been in the works for the past two years. 

“In the Heart of the Woods” maintains the nature theme he’s carried so far. Set in a small Ohio town in the summer of 1957, the novel follows 10-year-old Herbie Hereford as he joins three neighborhood kids — Tommy, Skeeter and Roger — to explore the woods on the edge of their town, one of the last remnants of the great eastern forest that once stretched across the American Midwest. 

Finally holding the finished novel, Johnson feels “very proud,” of it, he said. Prior to the novel, he took memoir writing and fiction writing courses at the Irish American Heritage Center in Chicago. 

“I was inspired by those courses to write more personal stories,” he said. “I thought it would be a great idea to combine my short stories into a novel about young people and how they interact with nature and the environment.” 

Deep dive 

In the climax of the novel, the woods are threatened with development, and the parents help the children prepare a presentation for their local city council to help protect the woods. 

Johnson wanted to convey that children can be “empowered to communicate their ideas about preservation” and “to take action” and they have more “power” and “ability” than people give them credit for. 

In addition to the exploration of the woods, the story also focuses on some of the issues the kids face in their own lives and how they “learn from each other and nature to help them deal with their issues,” he said. 

In his youth in the woods of northern Ohio, Johnson remembers playing as pirates with his friends and building a raft to go down a stream, coming across a wanderer, and learning to climb trees. Those experiences helped shape his novel. 

“I feel that now is the right time to come out with this novel because I think with the rise of technology and AI nowadays, statistics show that kids are having fewer and fewer experiences in nature and the outdoors,” Johnson said. “So, I wrote the novel to inspire kids and adults to provide their kids with more experiences outdoors. I think we need more of that in our society.” 

As a Highland Parker, Johnson enjoys hiking at Heller Nature Center, 2821 Ridge Road, where he is glad to see groups of children exploring, whether with their school or the park district.

Johnson hopes readers will take away from his novel some of Thoreau’s teachings: to become self reliant and to achieve that from “immersing ourselves in nature,” as well as “being safe” in doing so and knowing that exposure to the outdoors can make us develop “physically, emotionally, psychologically and be more independent,” he said. 

Looking ahead, Johnson is thinking of writing another nonfiction book on ecological restoration in the Chicagoland area. 

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