Peter Rock

Living with her father in a nature preserve in Portland, Oregon, thirteen-year-old Caroline only merges with the civilized world once a week when they go into the city, but an encounter with a backcountry jogger derails their entire existence.

My Abandonment

Passersthrough

Un padre vive con su hija en las profundidades de un bosque en las afueras de la ciudad. Ellos saben cómo caminar por el bosque sin dejar rastros, cómo bañarse y alimentarse sin que nadie pueda saber que están ahí. Conocen las plantas que los rodean, las venenosas y las nutritivas, también entienden las rutinas de los animales que ven pasar. Una tarde un descuido los torna visibles para un corredor que estaba ejercitándose. ¿Por qué viven ahí? ¿Quiénes son? La maquinaria estatal intercede y se pone en acción. Algo se rompe, todo cambia. Una novela que habla sobre el vínculo entre padre e hija, los modelos de aprendizaje, las libertades personales y el choque con el Estado. En pocas páginas, esta novela tan atrapante como profunda logra distintos niveles de lectura, con cada lector o lectora, una interpretación distinta.

Mi abandono

NOW A MAJOR FILM, LEAVE NO TRACE, DIRECTED BY DEBRA GRANIK AND STARRING BEN FOSTER AND THOMASIN HARCOURT MCKENZIE "Poignant . . . My Abandonment lingers in the mind, leaving you as haunted as its mesmerizing characters."--New York Post "This is probably the recent novel I recommend most... [a] short, disciplined, unsettling book."--Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life and The People in the Trees, for GQ A thirteen-year-old girl and her father live in Forest Park, an enormous nature preserve in Portland, Oregon. They inhabit an elaborate cave shelter, wash in a nearby creek, store perishables at the water's edge, use a makeshift septic system, tend a garden, even keep a library of sorts. Once a week they go to the city to buy groceries and otherwise merge with the civilized world. But one small mistake allows a backcountry jogger to discover them, which derails their entire existence, ultimately provoking a deeper flight. Inspired by a true story and told through the startlingly sincere voice of its young narrator, Caroline, My Abandonment is a riveting journey into life at the margins and a mesmerizing tale of survival and hope. "Original, unusual, and addictive."--Oregonian "[A] beautiful, strange novel . . . Fascinating and moving, it tells with great tenderness how human love goes wrong."--Ursula K. Le Guin

Now a Major Film: LEAVE NO TRACE

My Abandonment (Tie-In)

Two friends who grew up together as part of an extreme doomsday-prepping religion are reunited 20 years later in search for an abducted child in this new novel from the author of My Abandonment. 25,000 first printing.

The Shelter Cycle

“Swimming at night, to compare its slipperiness to that of a dream would be to ignore the work of staying afloat, the mesmerism brought on by the rhythm, the repetition of the strokes.” Beneath the surface of Lake Michigan there are vast systems: crosscutting currents, sudden drop-offs, depths of absolute darkness, shipwrecked bodies, hidden places. Peter Rock’s stunning autobiographical novel begins in the ’90s on the Door Peninsula of Wisconsin. The narrator, a recent college graduate, and a young widow, Mrs. Abel, swim together at night, making their way across miles of open water, navigating the currents and swells and carried by the rise and fall of the lake. The nature of these night swims, and of his relationship to Mrs. Abel, becomes increasingly mysterious to the narrator as the summer passes, until the night that Mrs. Abel disappears. Twenty years later, the narrator—now married with two daughters—tries to understand those months, his forgotten obsessions and dreams. Digging into old notebooks and letters, as well as clippings he’s preserved on the “psychic photography” of Ted Serios and scribbled quotations from Rilke and Chekhov, the narrator rebuilds a world he’s lost. He also looks for clues to the fate of Mrs. Abel, and begins once again to swim distances in dark water.

The Night Swimmers

In the tradition of Jon Krakauer's "Into the Wild," Rock's "My Abandonment," inspired by a true story and told through the startlingly sincere voice of his young protagonist, offers a riveting and unsettling account of a girl and her father who live off the grid.

Two people raised in an end-times sect reunite years later: “A stunning novel about faith and disillusionment and the lingering power of the past.” —Tom Perrotta, New York Times bestselling author of The Leftovers Written by a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and inspired by true events, The Shelter Cycle tells the story of two children, Francine and Colville, who grew up in the Church Universal and Triumphant, a religion that predicted the world could end in the late 1980s. While their parents built underground shelters to withstand the impending Soviet missile strike, Francine and Colville played in the Montana wilderness, where invisible spirits watched over them. When the prophesied apocalypse did not occur, the sect’s members resurfaced and the children were forced to grow up in a world they believed might no longer exist. Twenty years later, Francine and Colville are reunited while searching for an abducted girl in Idaho. Haunted by memories and inculcated beliefs, they must confront the Church’s teachings. If all the things they were raised to believe were misguided, why then do they suddenly feel so true? “Eerie [and] engrossing.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “A metaphysically haunting, shape-shifting novel that keeps the reader off balance and can’t be fully appreciated until its climax.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

The eerily engrossing second novel by the author of "This Is the Place" tells the story of a man and his stolen Dalmatian and their unsettling journey across the blurred borders between people, animals, and the United States.

Carnival Wolves

Now a Major Film, Leave No Trace , Directed by Debra Granik

Night Swimmers

A father and his estranged daughter reconnect to try to understand a decades-old trauma in this haunting novel, part ghost story, part lyrical exploration of family, aging, and how we remember the past. At age 11, Helen disappeared in the wilderness of Mount Rainier National Park while camping with her father, Benjamin. She was gone for almost a week before being discovered and returned to her family. It is now 25 years later, and after more than two decades of estrangement, Helen and Benjamin reconnect at his home in Portland, Oregon, to try to understand what happened during the days she was gone. Meanwhile, Benjamin meets an odd pair, a woman and boy who seem driven to help him learn more about Helen’s disappearance and send him on a journey that will lead to a murder house, uncanny possession, and a bone-filled body of water known as Sad Clown Lake, a lake “that could only be found by getting lost, that was never in the same place twice.” Passersthrough is a haunted, starkly lyrical exploration of family, memory, and the border between life and death.

En la maravillosa Mi Abandono, Peter Rock mostró su destreza para que conductas y situaciones extrañas parezcan completamente verosímiles, y para dotarlas de un profundo suspenso. Situada en los terrenos crepusculares entre la realidad y la fantasía, la locura y la cordura, donde muchos de nosotros vivimos durante la adolescencia, Klickitat cuenta una historia fascinante e inquietante sobre cómo escapar y esconderse a la vista de todos. Ursula K. Le Guin Los animales, como los humanos, cometen en la vida los errores que finalmente los conducen a la muerte, sea física, espiritual o emocional. Las personas y los animales que en la vida hacen siempre el mismo camino eventualmente harán un surco. Pronto los surcos se hacen tan profundos que las personas no pueden ver hacia los costados. No ven el peligro ni la belleza, solo el camino que tienen adelante, porque temen perder su seguridad y temen entrar en terreno desconocido.

Klickitat

Populated by strangers, ghosts, and other shadowy figures, the thirteen stories in The Unsettling attend to those startling moments when what we have understood as familiar is suddenly revealed as mysterious and foreign. A lonely man saving library books from an outbreak of mold listens to a coworker's tale about a blind woman and imbues it with his own sense of romance; a woman drives a Gold Firebird through the desert with a television playing "Rockford Files" reruns on the passenger seat; and a girl returns to her childhood home to spy on its new inhabitants, not realizing they are aware of her surveillance; a Poe–obsessed medical examiner constructs ornate scenes in an attempt to provoke hope in the forgotten lives of a dark and desperate city. Told through Rock's imaginative and wholly original voice, these are haunted tales about fascination, transformation, and the relationship between the two.

Stories

The Unsettling

In Portland, Orgeon, three high school friends—Leon, Chris and Kayla—spend their time skateboarding studying foreign languages and classical music, and plotting a shared future that will avoid the superficiality they witness in the adult world around them. There is only one adult they admire, whom they suspect might hold secrets worth knowing. Natalie lives alone in a decrepit trailer, yet seems happy, and to have few concerns. As they befriend her she persuades them to harvest copper wire from the high tension electrical lines in the countryside around the city, until one day when there is an accident in which Leon is electrocuted. He appears to shake it off, yet soon—despite his denials of anything being wrong—his behavior comes to resemble Natalie's in many ways. The mystery of what has happened to Leon (and to Natalie) leads Kayla and Chris on an adventure that takes them into the world of a remarkable group of people. These people live among us and are almost impossible to recognize, yet they possess different needs, and different powers. What they do not possess is insight into their condition, or any awareness that they are different. Others are left to wonder at—and attempt to profit from—the possibilities these people contain. Chris and Kayla are not alone in attempting to study, to use, and perhaps even to join their ranks.

Peter Rock

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