Especially with the refuge's existence under threat, he is tortured by the thought of what he owes to the animals in his care. As Bill admits his criminal past to Grace, he wonders if he can ever really be free of it. Kiefer maintains perfect balance between these two gripping plot strands. One is the story of how Bill and Rick got mixed up in the burglary, and why only one of them got away the other is what will happen when, with a major blizzard brewing, Rick arrives in Idaho looking for money and an apology. An incident from 1976 paved the way for Bill's future career, when his brother helped them rescue a red-tailed hawk with a broken wing.Īs the novel alternates between its two time periods, it sets up increasingly tense storylines. Retreating even further into the past, Kiefer shows the two boys meeting at their Battle Mountain trailer park in 1974. Every other chapter returns to 1984 to show how these two juvenile delinquents got embroiled in drugs, gambling, and holdups in Reno. The actions of twelve years ago catch up to him when his buddy Rick, just released from prison in Nevada, calls and says he is coming to get his share of the money they got in the heist that led to Rick's arrest. Soon Bill has even bigger trouble on his hands. Bill has Grace, the refuge veterinarian (and his girlfriend), on his side, but it is unclear whether they and a local judge have much of a case against federal regulations. A Fish & Wildlife warden has been giving him trouble about keeping federally protected species in cages without proper permits a bald eagle, a wolf, and especially Majer the blind grizzly bear, rescued from a gas station parking lot.

Bill inherited the wildlife refuge from his Uncle David and now, a decade later, is in danger of losing it. This gritty opening sequence establishes themes that will be essential to the novel: the fine line between instincts and decisions, the moral dilemmas involved in environmentalism, and the seeming inescapability of violence.

And sometimes you will answer with gunfire.' In the end they kill the moose it will be butchered for meat.

And yet you learn and relearn that everything is the same. 'Once upon a time, you told yourself that you would be no killer, that this was how you would live your life. The choice is between a tranquilizer dart and a rifle. It is 1996 and Bill Reed, who runs the North Idaho Wildlife Rescue, has been called to help a moose hit by a truck 'the highway was an abattoir.' He arrives on the scene to find that the animal has a broken hip and leg. 'What you have come for is death.' The second-person address and the sobering message make for a jolting start to The Animals. Kiefer's second novel contrasts wildness and civilization through the story of a man who runs an animal refuge to escape from his criminal past.

The Animals by Christian Kiefer