This is not my normal type of book but it caught my eye and so glad it did! Two brothers are working the family logging business that isn’t bringing in the money needed to live and with mounting bills, a leaky roof and winter fast approaching they take the risk of a poaching trip in the local Yellowstone National Park. This was an atmospheric read, some parts quite graphic with gore that gave Stephen Graham-Jones vibes and had a story line that kept me turning the pages way into the night. Thank you Granta for the ARC, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommend it to anyone who likes a gripping American fiction set in the wilderness.

In this laconic yet sensory novel, Wink brings to life the hardscrabble life of Thad and Hazen in the backwoods of Montana. Alike as chalk and cheese, the young men are trying to keep their lives going after losing their father, taking jobs where they can. Until a shadowy neighbour entices them to stage a heist on Federal land, as much risk as reward. The prose is spare but evocative, bringing to life the mountainous country around Yellowstone and the precarious lives of Thad, Hazen and their community. It’s all a race for survival, and the few glimmers of hope need to be grasped before the unforgiving country subsumes anyone who falls at the first hurdle. A disarmingly precise novel, the simmering tensions between the brothers are brilliantly depicted through gesture and intimation, as solid as smoke, and add a palpable tension to this literary Western of the new frontier.

I didn’t mean to read this in one day but I did and I really enjoyed it. I really love reading about sibling relationships, I find them so fascinating and interesting and I really liked the dynamic between Hazen and Thad. There was a lot of nuance and subtleties around their characters that I appreciated. Their relationship reminded me a little bit of George and Lennie from Of Mice and Men but with a modern take of sorts. This is a book that I know I’ll be thinking about in the months and years to come.

In an aging, timber house hand-built into the Absaroka-Beartooth mountains, two brothers are struggling to keep up with their debts. They live off the grid, on the fringe of Yellowstone, surviving off the wild after the death of their father. Thad, the elder, is more capable of engaging with things like the truck registration, or the medical bills they can’t afford from their father’s fatal illness, or the tax lien on the cabin their grandfather built, while Hazen is . . . different. This a very descriptive novel with the scenery and wildlife described perfectly. The relationship between the brothers too is characterised brilliantly. I just found the progress painfully slow which made reading it difficult at times. The writing is excellent but the ending feels unfinished. It definitely a slow burn.