When the Killing's Done
A Novel
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this “terrifically exciting and unapologetically relevant” (The Washington Post) novel from the award–winning author of The Tortilla Curtain, two activists clash in their attempts to preserve the environment.
“A smart and rollicking novel, with suspense and shipwrecks galore . . . Character, science, and history co-evolve marvelously here in a tale of fanaticism gone literally overboard.”—Barbara Kingsolver, The New York Times Book Review
Alma Boyd Takesue is a National Park Service biologist who is spearheading the efforts to save the endangered native creatures of California’s Channel Islands from invasive species such as rats and feral pigs. Her antagonist, Dave LaJoy, is a local businessman who is fiercely opposed to the killing of any animals and will go to any lengths to subvert Alma’s plans. As their confrontation plays out in a series of scenes escalating in violence, drama, and danger, When the Killing’s Done deftly relates a richly humane tale about the dominion we attempt to exert, for better or worse, over the natural world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Boyle (The Women) spins a grand environmental and family drama revolving around the Channel Islands off Santa Barbara in his fiery latest. Alma Boyd Takesue is an unassuming National Park Service biologist and the public face of a project to eradicate invasive species, such as rats and pigs, from the islands. Antagonizing her is Dave LaJoy, a short-tempered local business owner and founder of an organization called For the Protection of Animals. What begins as the disruption of public meetings and protests outside Alma's office escalates as Dave realizes he must take matters into his own hands to stop what he considers to be an unconscionable slaughter. Dave and Alma are at the center of a web of characters among them Alma's grandmother, who lost her husband and nearly drowned herself in the channel, and Dave's girlfriend's mother, who lived on a sheep ranch on one of the islands who provide a perspective that man's history on the islands is a flash compared to nature's evolution there. Boyle's animating conflict is tense and nuanced, and his sleek prose yields a tale that is complex, thought-provoking, and darkly funny everything we have come to expect from him.
