Rice Moore is just beginning to think his troubles are behind him.

He's taken a job as a caretaker for a remote forest preserve in Virginia, tracking wildlife and refurbishing cabins. It's totally solitary-perfect for hiding from the Mexican drug cartels he betrayed back in Arizona. But when Rice finds the carcass of a bear killed on the grounds, his quiet life is upended.

Rice becomes obsessed with catching the poachers before more bears are harmed. He partners with his predecessor, a scientist who hopes to continue her research on the preserve. Together, they descend deep into the Appalachian wilderness to try to stop the bear killings.

The undertaking is far more dangerous than they anticipated-they have hostile altercations with the locals, black marketeers, and even the law, and Rice's carefully constructed anonymity is blown up. His past is catching up to him in terrifying ways and he's running out of ideas for how to escape it...

James A. McLaughlin mixes gorgeous, hallucinatory prose with an unrelenting, breathless pace in this powerful debut-lush, humane, and utterly transfixing.