Reap

From the New York Times Bestselling author of the forthcoming THE NAMES OF DEAD GIRLS, THE SILENT GIRLS and LIE IN WAIT comes a smoldering and devastating literary crime novel in the tradition of Daniel Woodrell, Larry Brown, and Tom Franklin, and heralded by the New York Times as "Intoxicating. Creepy. Poetic. Arresting. Powerfully bloody." In this hard-edged, quick-moving, and violent tale, a young fatherless boy is unwittingly lured into a murderous plot in the Gothic backwoods of Northern Vermont when he bonds with a paranoid ex-con he's unaware is bent on revenge. All tempered by a fine lyric sensibility and an awareness of people and place that sings with evocation and authenticity.

THE NEW YORK TIMES SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW
Remarkable. Intoxicating. Arresting. Poetic.
A tale of macho violence and alternative horticulture in a creepy edge-of-the-world setting. The body count is high, and the violence persuasive. Most remarkable is the evocation of the territory, the Gothic tangle of native forest and exotic cash crop that mirrors the characters€ claustrophobic inner landscapes [and] the 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 REVIEW
A 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.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Harrowing. Absorbing. Unpredictable. Dangerous.
Bucolic and eerie, it probes the mysteries of growing as plants people and situations twist inexorably in unpredictable, dangerous directions. A progressively more harrowing, absorbing tale.

BOOK MAGAZINE
Transcends the typical. Harrowing. Inevitable.
Rickstad renders dark, often violent characters with such elegance that we will embrace them long after they€ve opted for the choice that is clearly wrong.

BOOKLIST
Rickstad pulls back the veneer of the bucolic wilderness of northern Vermont and finds trouble in paradise. Colorful, marginal, and often violent characters, and the undertone of violence, desperation, and drug dealing as a way of life underscores the fact that the country joins the inner city in becoming a modern American wasteland.

WEEKLY ALIBI
A haunting, dark story that seethes with human emotion. Turning each page is like opening the door to an open field.