First, You Swallow The Moon

Wessel, Kipp

ISBN 10: 0990924807 / ISBN 13: 9780990924807

Published by Radialgrain, 2016

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 25703044-n

Bibliographic Details

• Title: First, You Swallow The Moon
• Publisher: Radialgrain
• Publication Date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0990924807
• ISBN 13: 9780990924807
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

A modern novel of heartbreak and wilderness
Luminous, offbeat, and moving, First, You Swallow the Moon is a vibrant novel about love, loss and the sometimes manically impaired road to redemption. This is a novel about the counterpart to attachment - the sometimes impossible act of letting go.

Plan A: Survive Heartbreak

Plan B: Turn Self Into Bear

At twenty-four years old, all Jack Hesley knows with certainty is he's head over heels in love. But his life (and love) veers from center when his brother's car careens across an icy Wisconsin interstate and into a stand of pine. Stunned by loss, Jack retreats into isolation - a depression so stubborn the only living thing forceful enough to cross its threshold arrives in the shape of wild bears. He dreams them. He becomes obsessed by them. And he alters his forward path, risking limb and love, to follow real bears, grizzlies, into the thick woods of western Montana to untangle their impossible message - to become one of them.

A love story about love unraveled, First, You Swallow the Moon takes us from the edge of a frozen Minnesota lake into the forested river basins of Montana. But its geography has more to do with the wilderness within - the heart's centrifugal gravity of attachment. It follows one man's attempt to survive loss and transform the chambers of the human heart.

From the Inside Flap

No matter where I went or what I did, I failed to stem the constant memory of Ben and Clare, the alluvial river through my veins - Clare's soft kisses and Ben's firm hands on my shoulder, their missed smiles and laughter. I think I found my way into believing they would always be there, consuming me, never letting me go. I somehow believed it had become my job to swim beside them, their memory, their ghosts, because that exercise beat the alternative - swimming forever without them.

First, You Swallow the Moon is a novel about heartbreak - how we avoid its lasting imprint, sometimes to the point of delusion. It follows Jack, a young man who responds to the death of his brother and the estrangement of his girlfriend by following the one thing into the woods he believes can lead the way out of them - wild bears.

A love story about love unraveled, First, You Swallow the Moon takes us from the edge of a frozen Minnesota lake into the forested river basins of Montana. But its geography has more to do with the wilderness within - the heart's centrifugal gravity of attachment. Inspired by the singular hope to circumvent the pain of loss, Jack works to unlock wild bears' greatest secret - their ability to regulate their adaptive winter hearts.