Goat Mountain

In the fall of 1978, on the 640-acre family deer-hunting ranch on Goat Mountain in Northern California, a couple hours north of Clear Lake on a four-wheel-drive road, an eleven-year-old boy goes hunting with three men: his father, grandfather, and a friend of his father's. Goat Mountain is a dry place of live oak and buck brush and poison oak with occasional relief from stands of ponderosa pine, white pine, and sugar pine, and even a swampy bear wallow. This is the place where all the family's memories and stories and history are held. When the men arrive at the gate to their land, the father spots a poacher hunting illegally on his property. When he lets his eleven-year-old son take a look through the scope of his rifle, the boy pulls the trigger. The men struggle over what to do with the dead man. Though the struggle begins between the father and grandfather, it ultimately becomes a struggle between the grandfather and the boy. By the end, nothing is as it seems. An exploration of our most primal urges, what rules hold us together, and what we owe for what we've done, Goat Mountain is a compulsive read.

About the Author :
David Vann is an internationally bestselling author whose work has been translated into twenty languages. He is the winner of more than a dozen prizes, including the Grace Paley Prize, a California Book Award, the AWP Nonfiction Award, and France's L'Express Readers' Prize. His books include Legend of a Suicide, Caribou Island, A Mile Down, and Last Day on Earth. A former Guggenheim, Stegner, and National Endowment for the Arts fellow, Vann is a professor at the University of of Warwick in England. He has written for the Atlantic, Esquire, Outside, McSweeney's, the Sunday Times, the Observer, and many other publications and has appeared in documentaries for the BBC, Nova, National Geographic, and CNN. Tristan Morris is an Earphones Award-winning narrator. He received an MFA in acting from the New School for Drama in New York City after studying theater and philosophy at Pacific Lutheran University. His work as a voice actor began in 2011 after training with master teachers Scott Brick, Pat Fraley, and Nancy Wolfson. He works in New York City and Denver creating new theatrical works.

Review :
"David Vann is at once the most timely and timeless of writers...Goat Mountain is a ravishing example of his mastery...This book will touch you to the depths of our shared, flawed humanity." -- "Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author" "Meet David Vann, one [of] the most talented writers in the American West. Goat Mountain, with all its responsibility and recriminations, is the man at his absolute finest." -- "Craig Johnson, New York Times bestselling author of the Longmire series" "Shocking...The author's descriptions of the northern California landscape--the chaparral, woods, and mountains--are also masterly...This beautifully realized novel is recommended for fans of literary fiction but is not for the faint of heart." -- "Library Journal (starred review)" "Vann offers a meditation on violence set during a deer hunt on a Northern California mountain in 1978...This flint-hard novel, in its intensity, will likely be compared to the work of Cormac McCarthy." -- "Publishers Weekly" "Vann's third novel is his most visceral yet: a grinding examination of killing, God and the unnamable forces that create a dynasty of violence...This book is as all of Vann's fiction: provocative and unforgiving." -- "Kirkus Reviews" "Weaving biblical themes around bloodshed and sacrifice into visceral, graphic language, Vann's novel is not for the faint of heart, yet it just may be his finest, most contemplative work to date." -- "Booklist"