Wildfire Season - Hardcover

Pyper, Andrew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 000200562X ISBN 13: 9780002005623

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005

Synopsis

ROSS RIVER, a.k.a. "lost liver," is a town on the edge, clinging to the outside world at the end of the Yukon's loneliest road. It's the perfect hiding place for Miles McEwan, the town's hard-drinking, fist-fighting fire chief. No one gets close to Miles, except the blackened spectre of a young man only he can see, a haunting reminder of the forest fire that scarred Miles's face and psyche, forcing him to abandon his plans for the future as well as the woman he loved.

But the slow burn of Miles's exile is about to explode into life—and death—over the course of a handful of days at the height of the wildfire season. A hunting party seeking one of the last giant grizzlies is about to encounter a savagery of a different sort. In the mountains, a flame ignited by human hands begins to smoulder. And amidst the primeval beauty of rock and forest, someone is contemplating murder.

As the hunting expedition confronts a chilling new enemy, and the growing inferno races to the edge of town, Miles embarks on a desperate rescue not only for the life of his five-year-old daughter—a child, who, until this dangerous summer, has been a complete stranger—but also for his own salvation.

In The Wildfire Season, Andrew Pyper returns to the fictional landscape of the last true wilderness, portrayed with such authenticity in Lost Girls, his bestselling first novel. A blockbuster work of storytelling that drives relentlessly to its heart-stopping conclusion, The Wildfire Season is a dark psychological thriller, a visceral adventure and an unusual, and unusually moving, love story. It is also a lyrical exploration of our most raw emotional truths, of what ultimately binds us to family, to conscience, to what remains of the natural world. The Wildfire Season is storytelling at its very best.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

Haunted. Scarred. Alone. And the nightmare’s just beginning. 
Of all the end-of-the-world places he could have run to after he was burned, Miles McEwan chose Ross River.
            Buried deep in the vast wilderness of the Yukon, it seemed the perfect place to escape the past. Best of all, he could carry on doing what he did best--fighting fire. But five years on, Miles is still troubled by two phantoms of his previous life: the young man whose agonizing death preys on his conscience, and the woman he abandoned as a consequence.
            And in the dark forest around Ross River, fire and violence are brewing. As a small blaze becomes an inferno, a group of bear trackers is about to encounter nature in its wildest form. Elsewhere a killer is going about his work, quietly and ruthlessly. As the survivors of the hunting party are picked off one by one and fire rages through the mountains, Miles embarks on a desperate rescue mission, driven by love for a daughter who, until this dangerous summer, had been a perfect stranger.
            A remarkable work, The Wildfire Season is an edgy psychological thriller, a supernatural chiller, a terrifying tale of untamed nature, and an unusual--and unusually moving--story of what one can choose to endure in the name of love.

About the Author

ANDREW PYPER is the author of Lost Girls, his highly acclaimed first novel that was a bestseller in Canada, in the Top 10 on the TimesUK paperback list and in the Top 30 of The New York Times paperback bestseller list. The novel was selected as a Notable Book of the Year by The Globe and Mail and The New York Times and is currently being adapted for the screen. His second novel, The Trade Mission, was selected as a Top 10 Best Book of the Year by the Toronto Star and was published in Canada, the US and the UK to great acclaim. Pyper is also theauthor of Kiss Me, a collection of short stories. While researching and writing The Wildfire Season, he spent three of the past five summers living in the Yukon. His home is in Toronto. Visit his website at www.andrewpyper.com.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 000200562X
• ISBN 13: 9780002005623
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336