Hold the Dark
Now on Netflix
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Now a Netflix original film starring Alexander Skarsgard, Riley Keough and Jeffrey Wright
A terrifying literary thriller set on the Alaskan tundra, about the mystery of evil and mankind's losing battle with nature...
Wolves have come for the children of Keelut. Three children have been taken from this isolated Alaskan village, including the six-year-old son of Medora and Vernon Slone. Wolf expert Russell Core arrives in Keelut to investigate the killings and learns of the horrifying darkness at the heart of Medora.
When her husband returns from a desert war to discover his boy dead and his wife missing, he begins a maniacal pursuit that cuts a bloody swathe across the frozen landscape. As Core attempts to rescue Medora from her husband's vengeance, he comes face to face with an unspeakable secret about the indestructible bonds of family, and the untamed animal in the soul of every human being.
An epic woven of both blood and myth, Hold the Dark recalls the extreme climate and tribalism of Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone and the primeval violence of James Dickey's Deliverance.
'A fierce, extraordinary new novel... spectacularly violent and exquisitely written...If dust jackets were more than paper and ink, this one would bear blood and frost...Giraldi writes with force and precision and grace' - New York Times
'Haunting, brilliantly written and as sharp and cold as the landscape it describes' - Ann Cleeves
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Giraldi makes a dark departure from his rollicking debut, Busy Monsters, with this tale of vengeance, which tracks an aggrieved man through the back country of Alaska. The novel starts out slow and strange. Children are disappearing from the village of Keelut; locals think wolves are to blame. But when wolf expert Russell Core shows up to investigate, he makes a discovery: the body of the latest victim, Bailey Slone, strangled, and the boy's mother, Medora, missing from the scene. Vernon, Bailey's father, returns to town from military service overseas and goes on a maniacal rampage, brutally stabbing or shooting every cop and townsperson he encounters during his search for Medora. His boyhood friend Cheeon, a grizzled hunter even more dangerous than Vernon, joins him for part of the spree. Unfortunately, when the reason for Bailey's murder is finally disclosed, the big reveal feels more like a delayed gimmick than a genuine surprise. Still, if Giraldi set out to write an eerie portrait of depraved behavior set in the boonies, he certainly hit his target.
