Reap

A New York Times Notable Book. Taut, riveting, and unflinching, Reap is a American classic that draws readers into the dangerous and claustrophobic backwoods of Northern Vermont to witness a drugged out Gothic thriller of maimed and desperate characters. A hard-edged, quick-moving, and violent story charged with fate, bad blood, and family secrets, it's tempered by a fine lyric sensibility and an awareness of people and place that sings with evocation and authenticity. A masterwork.The New York Times Book ReviewRemarkable. Intoxicating. Poetic. Arresting. Powerfully bloody. A tale of macho violence and alternative horticulture in a creepy edge-of-the-world setting. The gothic tangle of native forest and exotic cash crop mirrors the characters' claustrophobic inner landscapes [with] grimly poetic images scattered throughout, like flashes of submerged lives never quite reeled in.Sunday Cleveland Plain Dealer A bloody beauty. Reap illuminates worlds of darkness. A dramatic reminder of the mystery and majesty of the wild places that exist in both man and nature.Los Angeles Times Book ReviewA complex portrait of a group of people whose interlocking fates snap into place with gruesome repercussions and of a boy who unwittingly stumbles into adulthood like a bird dog into a wolf trap.Weekly Alibi A haunting, dark story that seethes with human emotion. Turning each page is like opening the door to an open field. Publishers WeeklyAt turns bucolic and eerie. Unpredictable. Dangerous. A progressively more harrowing, absorbing tale.BooklistRickstad pulls back the veneer of the bucolic wilderness of Vermont and finds trouble in paradise.