All I know is that one day all the maps became useless and we had to make our own. The old’uns called the day the Fall or the Reformation. Nana said some down in the far south called it the Rapture. Nana was a babe when it happened, said her momma called it the Big Damn Stupid. Set everything back to zero.
An event has happened that set the world back to a time with no technology. Mother Nature is boss and seven year old Elka learns the hard way when her Nana is ‘lost’ during a strong storm. Elka ends up in the woods alone and starving. She gets taken in by a reclusive man she calls Trapper. Trapper teaches Elka all he knows about hunting, trapping and survival. He makes sure she knows to stay away from any person that she might run across out in the woods.
He never lets her go with him on those late night wolf hunts though.
One day after Elka has lived with him for years she finds out that the man she calls Daddy is a serial killer. She takes off into the woods with just a knife to escape from him. Her parents had gone North when Elka was a baby to get rich from a gold rush. She heads toward North to find them.
Told in the first person the book is completely inside Elka’s head. You might think that sounds boring but this book is anything but that.
Along the way Elka picks up a shadow in the form of a wolf that shows up when she seems to need him the worst.
She also falls for a man’s pretty face..
She learns quickly to trust only herself.
Men got one hell of a weakness, and when it ain’t their arrogance, it’s the dangling bits.
She saves a woman from a bad fate and they tag up. Agreeing to try and keep each other alive.
Penelope didn’t have no fat on her, no reserves for her body to live off ‘tween meals. If that was the price for beauty and the desire a’ men, well hell, you can keep it. Alive and ugly is better than pretty and dead.
They are followed by a woman law officer that is determined to bring in Elka and Trapper (who is following Elka on her journey.)
Elka’s character is haunted by demons but you can see that she does what she needs in order to survive. She knows what she wants and goes about getting it.
Smell a’ bacon.
Ain’t nothing in this world like it. Salt-cured, sliced thick, line a’ juicy fat crisping up in the pan. Anyone what tells you they don’t like bacon is either stupid or lying. Either way that ain’t no one you can trust.
This book is extremely dark and sometimes mystical. (There is my warning for the readers that are going to yell about how gross it gets)..Crap I loved this book! 4.5 stars!
Monsters ain’t real ‘cept in kids’ imaginations, under the beds, in the closets. We live in a world a’ men and there ain’t no good come out of tellin’ them they monsters. Makes ’em think they ain’t done nothin’ wrong, that it’s their nature and they can’t do nothin’ to change that. Callin’ ’em a monster makes ’em somethin’ different from the rest of us, but they ain’t. They just men, flesh and bone and blood. Bad’uns, truth, but men all the same.
(Booksource: I received a copy of this book for review from Netgalley and Bloggingforbooks.)
Evil Queen and the flying monkey reads 