Goat Mountain

In the fall of 1978, on the 640-acre family deer-huntingranch on Goat Mountain in Northern California, a couple hours north of ClearLake on a four-wheel-drive road, an eleven-year-old boy goes hunting with threemen: his father, grandfather, and a friend of his father’s. Goat Mountain is adry place of live oak and buck brush and poison oak with occasional relief fromstands of ponderosa pine, white pine, and sugar pine, and even a swampy bearwallow. This is the place where all the family’s memories and stories andhistory are held.

When the men arrive at the gate to their land, the father spotsa poacher hunting illegally on his property. When he lets his eleven-year-old sontake a look through the scope of his rifle, the boy pulls the trigger. The menstruggle over what to do with the dead man. Though the struggle begins betweenthe father and grandfather, it ultimately becomes a struggle between thegrandfather and the boy. By the end, nothing is as it seems.

An exploration ofour most primal urges, what rules hold us together, and what we owe for whatwe’ve done, Goat Mountain is a compulsive read.