Burn: A novel

From the acclaimed author of The Last Ranger, a novel about two men—friends since boyhood—who emerge from the woods of rural Maine to a dystopian country wracked by bewildering violence. Every year Jess and Storey have made an annual pilgrimage to northern Maine where they camp, hunt, and hike, leaving much from their long friendship unspoken. Although the state has convulsed all summer with secession mania—a mania that had simultaneously spread across other states—Jess and Storey figure it’s a fight reserved for legislators or, worse-case scenario, folks in the capitol. But after two weeks hunting moose off the grid, the men reach a small town and are shocked to find a bridge blown apart, buildings burned to the ground, and bombed-out cars abandoned on the road. Trying to make sense of the sudden destruction all around them, the men set their sights on finding their way home, dragging a wagon across bumpy dirt roads, ransacking boats left in the lakes, and dodging men who are armed—secessionists or military, they cannot tell—as they seek a path to safety. And then, a startling discovery, a child in the cabin of a boat, drastically alters their path and the stakes of their escape. Drenched with the beauty of the natural world, and attuned to the specific cadences of male friendship, even here at the edge of doom, Heller’s magisterial new novel is both a blistering warning of a divided country’s political strife and an ode to the salvation of our chosen families.