I was numb. I was a cloud. I wanted to feel like this forever.
At thirty years old, Jason Hardung is concussed from a bar fight and addicted to heroin, slumming in a house without electricity or running water. After witnessing the near suicide of a stranger, he makes a desperate call for help, hoping the forces that pushed him under can pull him back up.
This is Wyoming, where manhood is a pressure test described by the elements, and where tenderness is worse than weakness-it's a refusal to face the facts. But facts alone don't tell a story. Jason will spend the next twenty years figuring out what does.
Told with deadpan clarity and surprising humor, Mammal embodies the terrors and joys of a poet born into a blue-collar world.
ADVANCE PRAISE
"A brilliant, bloody, big-hearted debut. Hardung has made me a lifelong fan."
- Mary Miller, author of Biloxi and Always Happy Hour
"Almost unbearably human, honest, and genuine-all strong and unexpectedly sweet medicine for days like ours."
- Bonnie Nadzam, author of Lions and Lamb
"A brilliant work of luminous love, pain, guts, burning hearts, a shadow lifting. Jason Hardung is an outstanding artist."
- Bud Smith, author of Teenager