When Puck makes his way out of the facility, the assistant manager, a man with a squat, square body, chases him down in the parking lot. The sky is a dying shade of purple. Puck keys open his pickup and pulls off his hat and tosses it inside the cab. The manager asks if everything looked okay.
“Everything was great,” Puck says and checks his hair in the side mirror. “Just lovely.”
“Will you be sending me a report?”
Puck climbs into the cab and keys the ignition and says over the engine, “You’ll be hearing from me.”
And he will. Everyone will. One night or another, likely when the moon is full, they will shut off their televisions or set down their forks or pause in their lovemaking, their heads cocked, before going to the window and staring through their warped reflections and wondering at the sirens that steadily fill the night with their howling.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Katherine Fausset, Holly Frederick, and all the rest of the grand old crew at Curtis Brown, Ltd.
To Team Werewolf: Helen Atsma, Kirsten Reach, Oliver Johnson, and all the good and mighty at Hachette for their editorial and marketing muscle.
To Lyric Bartholomay, Cory O’Neel, Jason Ryan Arment, Julie Babbit, Chris Herring, Michael Kimber, Peter Percy, and Elizabeth Whitley for their help with the heavy research that went into this novel.
To Tyler Cabot, Rob Spillman, Kevin Larimer, Donovan Hohn, and Radhika Jones for their support. To Dean Bakopoulos for friendship. To Peter Straub and John Irving for wisdom and encouragement.
To my colleagues and students at St. Olaf College, Pacific University, and Iowa State University.
To the National Endowment for the Arts.
And a special thanks to my family, especially my wife, whose tolerance and enthusiasm and partnership mean everything. I’d lasso the moon for you, Chief.
About the Author
BENJAMIN PERCY was raised in the high desert of Central Oregon. He is the author of the novel The Wilding and two short-story collections, Refresh, Refresh and The Language of Elk. His honors include a Whiting Writers Award, the Pushcart Prize, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and The Paris Review’s George Plimpton Prize for Fiction. His fiction and nonfiction have been read on National Public Radio and published by Esquire, GQ, Men’s Journal, Outside, Time, and the Wall Street Journal. He is the writer-in-residence at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota.
Also by Benjamin Percy
The Wilding
Refresh, Refresh
The Language of Elk
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Contents
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Epigraph
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Part II
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Part III
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Benjamin Percy
Newsletters
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Benjamin Percy
Cover design by Henry Yee
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First ebook edition: May 2013
Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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Published simultaneously in Great Britain by Hodder & Stoughton, May 2013.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
“Furr” written by E. Earley © 2008 Wild Mountain Nation Music (ASCAP).
Any trademarks referenced in this book are marks which belong to their respective rights holders.
ISBN: 978-1-4555-0168-7