Bearskin

by James A. McLaughlin

Overview

WINNER OF THE 2019 EDGAR FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL

“Bearskin is visceral, raw, and compelling—filled with sights, smells, and sounds truly observed.  It’s a powerful debut and an absolute showcase of exceptional prose.  There are very few first novels when I feel compelled to circle brilliant passages, but James McLaughlin’s writing had me doing just that.” —C.J. Box, #1 NYT bestselling author of The Disappeared

Rice Moore is just beginning to think his troubles are behind him. He’s found a job protecting a remote forest preserve in Virginian Appalachia where his main responsibilities include tracking wildlife and refurbishing cabins. It’s hard work, and totally solitary—perfect to hide away from the Mexican drug cartels he betrayed back in Arizona. But when Rice finds the carcass of a bear killed on the grounds, the quiet solitude he’s so desperately sought is suddenly at risk.

More bears are killed on the preserve and Rice’s obsession with catching the poachers escalates, leading to hostile altercations with the locals and attention from both the law and Rice’s employers. Partnering with his predecessor, a scientist who hopes to continue her research on the preserve, Rice puts into motion a plan that could expose the poachers but risks revealing his own whereabouts to the dangerous people he was running from in the first place.

James McLaughlin expertly brings the beauty and danger of Appalachia to life. The result is an elemental, slow burn of a novel—one that will haunt you long after you turn the final page.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062742797
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	06/12/2018
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	767,792
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

James A. McLaughlin holds law and MFA degrees from the University of Virginia. His fiction and essays have appeared in The Missouri Review, The Portland Review, River Teeth, and elsewhere. He grew up in rural Virginia and lives in the Wasatch Range east of Salt Lake City, Utah.

Editorial Reviews

…[a] gruesomely gorgeous debut novel about an imperfect hero who redeems himself by taking up the cause of these noble, if terrifying, beasts…McLaughlin writes about the natural world with casual lyricism and un-self-conscious joy, while describing physical violence so vividly you want to look away…[He] is just as remarkable when he turns to other subjects…[with] the kind of writing that makes me shiver.

The New York Times Book Review - Marilyn Stasio

★ 04/23/2018
As taut as a crossbow and as sharp as an arrowhead, McLaughlin’s debut unfolds in the Appalachian wilderness of Virginia, a landscape whose heart of darkness pulses viscerally through its characters. Rice Moore is working as a biologist caretaker at the vast Turk Mountain Preserve when he discovers that poachers are killing bears to sell their organs on overseas drug markets. Rice’s efforts to curtail their activities antagonizes locals who raped the last caretaker and left her for dead, and—worse—it alerts agents of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel, from which Rice has been fleeing for reasons revealed gradually, to his whereabouts. McLaughlin skillfully depicts Rice, revealing quirks and peculiarities of his personality that show how “his hold on what he’d always believed was right and what was wrong had grown fatigued, eventually warping to fit the contours of the world he inhabited”—a disconcerting revelation that helps establish the suspenseful feeling that anything can happen. Rice’s story builds toward violent confrontations with the poachers, the cartel, and nature itself. The novel’s denouement, a smoothly orchestrated confluence of the greater and lesser subplots, plays out against a tempest-tossed natural setting whose intrinsic beauty and roughness provide the perfect context for the story’s volatile events. This is a thrilling, thoroughly satisfying debut. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Bearskin is visceral, raw, and compelling—filled with sights, smells, and sounds truly observed.  It’s a powerful debut and an absolute showcase of exceptional prose.  There are very few first novels when I feel compelled to circle brilliant passages, but James McLaughlin’s writing had me doing just that.” 

C.J. Box

At once brutal and beautiful, Bearskin is a tense, haunting thriller brought to life by McLaughlin’s deft and vivid rendering of the rugged mountain landscape and the beasts that dwell within. A powerful debut.

Laura McHugh

A secret past, old foes, bloodthirsty locals, and the destruction of the natural world converge in McLaughlin’s debut novel. An intricately written thriller that explores the darkest parts of human nature against the beauty of unspoiled American wilds.” 

Ace Atkins

★ 2018-05-01
A fugitive from a Mexican cartel takes refuge in a forest preserve in the wilds of Virginia.Rice Moore, the troubled protagonist of this hard-edged thriller, can best be described as remote, a characteristic he shares with his hazardous surroundings. He's taken a job, under a false name, as the caretaker for a family-owned nature preserve in the Appalachian Mountains. It's a slim chance for him to escape his past, one that includes a gig as a drug mule for the Sinoloa cartel, the torture, rape, and murder of his girlfriend, and a long stint in a prison in Nogales, where he trained as a sicario—a most hostile killer of men. Rice is a dangerous man, one bound to surprise the bullies, hunters, and motorcycle gangs that roam these mountains. In a very Billy Jack way, he soon runs afoul of all manner of local threats, among them the police, a suspicious neighbor, and a band of predators who have been killing the mountain's bears, removing paws and gallbladders for black-market sale in Asia. Rice also takes offense when he learns that his predecessor, a biologist named Sara Birkeland, was viciously assaulted and raped during her tenure as caretaker. It's a violent, compelling story that uses its milieu to incredible effect. Eventually we find Rice stalking the land in a ghillie suit, blinded by visions, waiting for the kill—a patience that comes in handy when he later finds himself in a desperate showdown, fighting for his life against the past that has come baying for his blood. Told in spare prose and portraying the authentic mechanics of hunting, combat, and psychological defense, the novel dares the reader to root for this damaged antihero but convinces us that he's worth it.An intense, visceral debut equal to the best that country noir has to offer.

Kirkus Reviews

Bearskin—a gripping tale written in spare, beautiful prose—tells the tale of Rice Moore, a reluctant hero, competent, resilient, and utterly engaging.  McLaughlin is a gifted storyteller, and Bearskin is a remarkable debut.

Scott Smith

One of the year’s most buzzy, fascinating thrillers. . . . A suspenseful, emotionally resonant journey into one man’s dark past.

Entertainment Weekly

Fast-paced and evocative. . . . A genuine page-turner. . . . [Bearskin] emerges from some darker place, a creature of undeniable power.

New York Journal of Books

[A] near-perfect first novel. . . . [A] carefully crafted tale of mystery, ecology, backwoods mysticism and downright evil.

Shelf Awareness

[A] twisty, knuckle-gnawing thriller. . . . Remarkable. . . . Terrifying.

Jonathan Segura

Exciting. . . . McLaughlin skillfully breaks down the actions of hunter and hunted into their constituent parts. . . . Some of the best action writing in recent fiction.

Washington Post

Gruesomely gorgeous. . . . McLaughlin writes about the natural world with a casual lyricism and un-self-conscious joy. . . . Remarkable. . . . The kind of writing that makes me shiver.

New York Times Book Review

A journey into the wilds of Appalachia. . . . Tightly plotted and beautifully written, Bearskin marks an auspicious debut.

Nylon Magazine

A powerful and often profound debut. . . . Bearskin constructs a riveting narrative, set within a natural world that, should it vanish, McLaughlin suggests, might take part of us with it.

USA Today

Haunting. . . . Rendered in remarkable prose. . . . [An] edgy tale, with human greed and wildlife exploitation at its heart.

Booklist

Part thriller, part crime novel, part dreamscape, James A. McLaughlin’s Bearskin refuses to be contained. . . . Smart and sophisticated, with animals both wild and domestic acting as metaphors, [it] is a gritty, down-home tale told with brute force.

BookPage

One of the year’s most buzzy, fascinating thrillers. . . . A suspenseful, emotionally resonant journey into one man’s dark past.

Entertainment Weekly

Haunting. . . . Rendered in remarkable prose. . . . [An] edgy tale, with human greed and wildlife exploitation at its heart.

Booklist

A journey into the wilds of Appalachia. . . . Tightly plotted and beautifully written, Bearskin marks an auspicious debut.

Nylon Magazine

One of the year’s most buzzy, fascinating thrillers. . . . A suspenseful, emotionally resonant journey into one man’s dark past.

Entertainment Weekly

[A] near-perfect first novel. . . . [A] carefully crafted tale of mystery, ecology, backwoods mysticism and downright evil.

Shelf Awareness

Part thriller, part crime novel, part dreamscape, James A. McLaughlin’s Bearskin refuses to be contained. . . . Smart and sophisticated, with animals both wild and domestic acting as metaphors, [it] is a gritty, down-home tale told with brute force.

BookPage

Fast-paced and evocative. . . . A genuine page-turner. . . . [Bearskin] emerges from some darker place, a creature of undeniable power.

New York Journal of Books

A powerful and often profound debut. . . . Bearskin constructs a riveting narrative, set within a natural world that, should it vanish, McLaughlin suggests, might take part of us with it.

USA Today

Exciting. . . . McLaughlin skillfully breaks down the actions of hunter and hunted into their constituent parts. . . . Some of the best action writing in recent fiction.

Washington Post

Gruesomely gorgeous. . . . McLaughlin writes about the natural world with a casual lyricism and un-self-conscious joy. . . . Remarkable. . . . The kind of writing that makes me shiver.

New York Times Book Review

02/15/2018
On the lam from a drug cartel after they killed his girlfriend, biologist Rice Moore has gone off the grid in Virginia, finding work as a caretaker at the secluded Turk Mountain Preserve. The forest is off-limits to hunters, and Moore's primary job is to monitor the vast acreage for disturbances. It's lonely and exhausting work but exactly what Moore needs, until he discovers a bear carcass left behind by poachers, who sell the gallbladders on the black market. His pursuit of the trespassers will shatter his solitude and resurrect the demons of a past life he's tried to bury. Other characters include Rice's predecessor, Sara Birkeland, who was forced off the preserve after a vicious attack, and a local biker gang that Rice suspects is involved in the poaching. But McLaughlin's most memorable character is the dense ecosystem of the Appalachian forest, which is explored in vivid and often dreamlike prose. These lush, hallucinatory sequences sometimes stunt the momentum of the central mystery, but McLaughlin gets it back for a violent climax. VERDICT This versatile debut is hard to pin down, successfully straddling the line between the evocative erudition of Gabriel Tallent's My Absolute Darling, Tom Franklin's Poachers, and page-turning suspense of C.J. Box. [See Prepub Alert, 12/11/17.]—Michael Pucci, South Orange P.L., NJ

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