Wild Animus: A Novel - Softcover

Shapero, Rich

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0971880107 ISBN 13: 9780971880108

Publisher: Too Far Pub, 2004

Synopsis

After graduating from college, Sam Altman finds himself subject to an urge he doesn't understand, an urge drawing him away from civilization. Altman's unleashed - and increasingly unhinged - imagination takes him first to Seattle and then farther north, to the remote Alaskan wilderness. Sam has fallen deeply in love with the mysterious and powerful Lindy, a young woman who will do anything to help him realize his quest, no matter how dangerous. Alone with a driving need to uncover his innermost self, Sam gradually transforms himself into a ram - prey to a pack of strangely familiar wolves. The mad pursuit leads from the wilds to civilization and back again. And when Sam and Lindy return to the perilous mountain together, the truth behind his imagined transformation emerges. Cover Image May Vary

About this title

About the Author

Rich Shapero grew up in California and headed north as soon as he could scrape the fare together. Captivated by the staggering beauty of the Alaskan wilderness, and the dare of its dangerous side, his explorations have taken the form of meditations on transcendence. For Shapero, the primeval landscape tests not only human endurance, but the boundaries of the human spirit. Whether circumnavigating Chichagof Island by sailboat, dog sledding the arctic, or traversing 400 miles of mountainous terrain solo as he did while writing Wild Animus Shapero's focus has been on the exploration within. The real goal, he maintains, is a fresh discovery of ourselves.

From the Inside Flap

How far would you go to find yourself? In Rich Shapero's provocative debut novel, a young man rejects a normal life to follow a wild, inner calling.

Sam Altman, disillusioned with the world of the 60s, has fallen deeply in love with the mysterious Lindy, a young woman who inspires him to seek the foundations of his heart. She understands his quest, and will do anything to help him realize it--no matter how dangerous.

Sam's unleashed and increasingly unhinged imagination drives them north to the remote Alaskan wilderness. On the unforgiving ridges of Mt. Wrangell, alone with his wayward ideas, Sam, who has renamed himself Ransom, gradually transforms himself into a ram--prey to a pack of strangely familiar wolves.

The mad pursuit leads from the wilds to civilization and back again. And when Ransom and Lindy return to brave the perilous mountain together, the truth behind his imagined transformation emerges. What they discover in those frozen heights threatens their love as well as their sanity and their lives.

More than an adrenaline-charged adventure, Wild Animus is a search for the primordial and a journey to the breaking point. It is a story of love and sacrifice, of obsession, of finding the limits of the heart and going one step farther.

Reviews

Shapero unwisely uses the prologue of his debut novel to divulge the ending, so the remaining 300 pages do little more than track one man's tedious journey toward acid-induced madness. Drug dealer Sam Altman, an unhappy and lonely student at the University of California–Berkeley in the late 1960s, meets and falls in love with equally unhappy and lonely Lindy at an antiwar protest. Attempting to evade arrest for drug dealing, the couple flee to Washington State, where Sam's chronic use of LSD leads him to cut himself off from his friends, change his name to Ransom and yearn to become "a fur-covered shaman, a wild ram-man, chanting the liturgy of surrender." The pair end up in Alaska, where she waitresses to support him while he writes a novel, masquerades as a mountain ram and imagines he's being chased by a rout of wolves. Though Ransom's hallucinations worsen by the day, Lindy and his few remaining friends are too intimidated by his behavior and unhappy themselves to intervene, leaving him to his tragic and inevitable end (which, of course, has already been divulged). Shapero does have a talent for vivid imagery, but this is still just a sad tale of a man whose drug addiction drives him and everyone around him crazy.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Too Far Pub
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0971880107
• ISBN 13: 9780971880108
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 315