"Set in the wilds of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, these linked stories deftly probe the emotional wounds of men with lost jobs, bruised egos and failed expectations: an unflinching reality check on the state of middle-age manhood today."
—The New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice
"It’s not necessary to be even vaguely interested in [hunting] to appreciate “Hunter’s Moon,” a skillfully wrought, often mesmerizing novel-in-stories....written in a succinctly lyrical prose...fresh and surprising."
—Chicago Tribune
"Stellar writing. . . .captivating relationships. . . .Mr. Caputo has written 17 books, mostly novels. His 1977 debut, the memoir A Rumor of War, established him as a first-class storyteller. . . .Additional kudos for his ability to write women who are not only believable and three-dimensional but influential and strong."
—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"Probing deeply into the male psyche, Caputo confidently tackles subjects that include the sometimes-catastrophic price of failure, the relations between fathers and sons, and the emotional battles faced by returning combat veterans. While hunting figures prominently in most of the stories. . . .even readers unfamiliar with that pursuit will find themselves immersed in Caputo's fast-moving narratives. In vivid and minutely observant prose, he writes with assurance about his characters' wilderness experiences and with equal sensitivity about the captivating natural beauty that surrounds them."
—Kirkus, starred review
"Superb storyteller Caputo offers a tapestry weaving the friendships, losses, and past mistakes of ordinary people. Readers of literary fiction will not be disappointed in this first-rate collection."
—Library Journal, starred review
"The setting here is the vividly rendered Upper Peninsula of Michigan, but the battlefield nonetheless remains that of men’s souls. While most of the tales involve hunting, Caputo has bigger game in his sights: a study of man versus nature as metaphor for man versus human nature. Both are red in tooth and claw."
—Booklist
"HUNTER’S MOON brims with a hard beauty that builds upon itself, page by page, story by story, until the smells, sounds and terrain of Upper Michigan come to reside beneath readers' eyelids. Philip Caputo proved his exceptional literary bona fides many books ago and here he is, again making American life rip and howl. The world needs more men in it like the character Will Treadwell, and literature needs more books like this, mesmerizing and profound at once. I savored HUNTER’S MOON and you will too."
—Matt Gallagher, author of Youngblood
"Phillip Caputo is one of our finest, and too frequently undervalued writers—a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author of eight novels, five books of nonfiction, and two memoirs, including the iconic Vietnam memoir, A Rumor of War. HUNTER'S MOON marks a departure for Caputo, and a grand success. Set in the largely untapped literary landscape of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, this collection of short stories, each distinct and self-contained, are subtly and ingeniously intertwined to create a whole. Here Caputo seamlessly combines his journalistic strengths of precisely detailed observation, with the stylistic lyricism of the poet-novelist. His characters, both men, and particularly the women, are beautifully drawn, authentically vivid human beings, representing a broad spectrum of modern American angst, hubris, violence, fragility, heartbreak, resiliency, and hope. Caputo knows his country with a similar intimacy. His description of the landscape and natural world of the remote Upper Peninsula, as well as those who inhabit it—animal and human—could only be written by a man who has walked, hunted, fished, camped, and, in one of his more harrowing stories, been lost there. This is a superb book, by a master at the top of his form."
—Jim Fergus, author of One Thousand White Women
“A brilliant series of interconnected stories about relationships and the myriad ways we both rescue and disappoint the people we love most. HUNTER’S MOON is about parents and children, the death of old friends, the recovery from loss and near-loss. In it, Caputo continues to chronicle of ups and downs of our collective character, our better angels along with our worse ones. He proves himself to be a master investigator of the human psyche in the mold of Chekov, Tolstoy, and Bellow.”
—Philipp Meyer, author of American Rust and The Son
“A poignant and savage tribute to the wilds of the American landscape and to the wilds of the American soul. With Hunter’s Moon, Philip Caputo shows us, once again, why he is a giant of contemporary letters.”
—Elliot Ackerman, author of Waiting for Eden
"HUNTER'S MOON is nothing short of a revelation—a masterpiece by one of America’s great writers. A kaleidoscopic effort that fractures and fractures again, displaying beautiful shards of what it means to be a human being. Caputo has written a book that will haunt me for many years. I am essentially ill-equipped to describe the deep wisdom, beauty, and horror inherent in this multilayered and stunning work."
—Nickolas Bulter internationally best-selling author of Shotgun Lovesongs and Little Faith
Praise for Philip Caputo
"Caputo's troubled, searching meditations...are among the most eloquent I have read in modern literature."
—William Styron, The New York Review of Books
“Caputo knows how to set a scene and build tension through detail...His prose is tough-minded but not without compassion, and he brings experience from one part of the world to another.” —Seattle Times
"To call [A RUMOR OF WAR] the best book about Vietnam is to trivialize it. Heartbreaking, terrifying, and enraging, it belongs to the literature of men at arms." —John Gregory Dunne, Los Angeles Times Book Review
06/24/2019
Caputo (Some Rise by Sin) probes violent masculinity and intergenerational conflicts, largely against the severe backdrop of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, in this decent but repetitive collection of interlinked stories. Father and sons quarrel viciously in “Grief,” in which a middle-aged Jeffery Havlicek brings his possibly senile father, Hal, on a hunting trip following Hal’s wife’s death, and in “The Nature of Love on the Last Frontier,” in which Paul’s frustrations with Trey, his impetuous son, evaporate in melodramatic brushes with disaster on a hunting trip in Alaska. Haunted Vietnam vet Will Treadwill stars in “Dreamers” as a guide to two Chicago policemen on a bear hunt. Will’s temper turns a tense encounter with younger, volatile Lonnie Kidman into a brutal calamity; a similar impulse in “Lost” leads to his frightening, disoriented night in the woods. “Lines of Departure” stumbles as it veers from pillorying the do-gooders who run the retreat for veterans with PTSD where Will volunteers to honestly recounting the carnage of war. Bed-and-breakfast host Lisa Williams, the only female protagonist, outgrows her once-a-year affair with Gaetan Clyne in “The Guest.” Caputo’s men cloak vulnerability with callousness, but his plots replace emotional growth with the shocks of violence. This collection will appeal to readers looking for a dramatic take on masculinity, though the stories blend together by the end. (Aug.)
Veteran character actor Alex Hyde-White delivers just the right down-to-earth Midwest tone in these seven interconnected short stories. They examine the lives of a small group of friends who grew up in the 1960s, went to war, returned, started families and businesses—and suddenly it’s twilight, time to look back on their lives. There is a tough realism to these tales of regret, broken vows, and shattered memories. As Hyde-White deftly delivers Caputo’s descriptive prose, one has the feeling that these characters aren’t quite happy with how things came out and that heading out to the deep woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula with a bird dog and a gun may be the only sensible option. B.P. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
★ 2019-05-13
Seven linked stories explore aspects of contemporary manhood.
Though all but one are set in a small corner of Michigan's remote, rugged Upper Peninsula, the seven stories that compose this collection are anything but claustrophobic. Probing deeply into the male psyche, Caputo (Some Rise by Sin, 2017, etc.) confidently tackles subjects that include the sometimes-catastrophic price of failure, the relations between fathers and sons, and the emotional battles faced by returning combat veterans. While hunting figures prominently in most of the stories—like "Blockers," in which three high school friends reunite on a fateful weeklong bird-hunting trip, or "The Nature of Love on the Last Frontier," set in the Alaskan bush as a father and son lock horns in a tense generational conflict that turns life-threatening—even readers unfamiliar with that pursuit will find themselves immersed in Caputo's fast-moving narratives. In vivid and minutely observant prose, he writes with assurance about his characters' wilderness experiences and with equal sensitivity about the captivating natural beauty that surrounds them. Will Treadwell, a Vietnam veteran and one-time owner of a popular local brewpub, appears in five of the stories, including "Dreamers," which is built around an incident of frightening violence, and "Lost," an understated evocation of the terror of accidental isolation in the unforgiving forest. His recurring presence is a quietly effective linking device. "The Guest," a portrait of an episodic middle-age affair and the only story with a female protagonist, brings back Lisa Williams from "Blockers" years after her life has been altered irrevocably by the events of the earlier story. The collection's final entry, "Lines of Departure," again features Treadwell and a narrator named Phil, whose biography bears some resemblance to Caputo's own. Unfolding at a weekend retreat for troubled veterans, it's a compassionate glimpse of how "the psychic pain of war's aftermath could be as isolating as acute physical pain" and a fitting conclusion to an intense, often unsettling journey into the male mind and heart.
Expertly blending plot and character, each of these taut, propulsive tales possesses novelistic depth.
