Tom Keller belongs to the most notorious family in a region filled with poachers, mink farms and other shady enterprises. He grows up in this milieu full of secrets, blessed with a prodigious talent for motocross. When, as a grown man, he suddenly goes missing, his rebellious daughter returns to the home turf she was so eager to leave behind in search of him, culminating in a family reunion that takes a dramatic turn.
‘If only he’d done just that – oh, if only he’d wrung their necks, then that would have been the end of that, and then everyone would have been spared the whole unholy mess later on and then maybe no one would have ever had to tell this story. But they found him, in the beam of the motorcycle lamp, amid the thistles and stinging nettles at the side of the road, shaking and bawling just the way you’d expect a nine-year-old kid to do in a fix like that.’
Gijs Wilbrink (b. 1984) is an author, musician and founder of a podcast platform, a music blog and a literary fanzine. The Animals is his debut.
