From the author of A Rumor of War, The Longest Road, and Some Rise By Sin, a captivating mosaic of stories set in a small town where no act is private and the past is never really past
HUNTER’S MOON
A Novel in Stories
by Philip Caputo
Deckle Edge, August 2019
“A poignant and savage tribute to the wilds of the American landscape and to the wilds of the American soul. With Hunter’s Moon, Philip Caputo shows us, once again, why he is a giant of contemporary letters.” ―Elliot Ackerman, author of Waiting for Eden
HUNTER’S MOON is set in Michigan’s wild, starkly beautiful Upper Peninsula, where a cast of recurring characters move into and out of each other’s lives, building friendships, facing loss, confronting violence, trying to bury the past or seeking to unearth it. Once-a-year lovers, old high-school buddies on a hunting trip, a college professor and his wayward son, a middle-aged man and his grief-stricken father, come together, break apart, and, if they’re fortunate, find a way forward. HUNTER’S MOON offers an engaging, insightful look at everyday lives but also a fresh perspective on the way men navigate in today’s world.
Philip Caputo is an award-winning journalist―the co-winner of a Pulitzer Prize―and the author of many works of fiction and nonfiction, including “A Rumor of War”, one of the most highly praised books of the twentieth century. His book, “The Longest Road”, was a New York Times bestseller. His novels include “Acts of Faith”, “The Voyage”, “Horn of Africa”, “Crossers”, and “Some Rise by Sin”.
Fiona and Liv are seniors at Buchanan College, a small liberal arts school in rural Pennsylvania. Fiona, who is still struggling emotionally after the death of her younger sister, is spending her final college year sleeping with abrasive men she meets in bars. Liv is happily coupled and on the fast track to marriage with an all-American frat boy. Both of their journeys, and their friendship, will be derailed by the relationships they develop with Oliver Ash, a ruggedly good-looking visiting literature professor whose first novel was published to great success when he was twenty-six. 
Set in a fractured United States, in the southwestern country now known as Texoma. A world where magic is acknowledged but mistrusted, especially by a young gunslinger named Lizbeth Rose. Battered by a run across the border to Mexico Lizbeth Rose takes a job offer from a pair of Russian wizards to be their local guide and gunnie. For the wizards, Gunnie Rose has already acquired a fearsome reputation and they’re at a desperate crossroad, even if they won’t admit it. They’re searching through the small border towns near Mexico, trying to locate a low-level magic practitioner, Oleg Karkarov. The wizards believe Oleg is a direct descendant of Grigori Rasputin, and that Oleg’s blood can save the young tsar’s life. As the trio journey through an altered America, shattered into several countries by the assassination of Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Depression, they’re set on by enemies. It’s clear that a powerful force does not want them to succeed in their mission. Lizbeth Rose is a gunnie who has never failed a client, but her oath will test all of her skills and resolve to get them all out alive.
Exhausted by dead-end forays in the gay dating scene, surrounded constantly by friends but deeply lonely in New York City, and drifting into academic abyss, twenty-something graduate student Richard has plenty of sources of anxiety. But at the forefront is his crippling writer’s block, which threatens daily to derail his graduate funding and leave Richard poor, directionless, and desperately single.