by Peter Heller
Hig's wife is gone, his friends are dead, and he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, Jasper, and a mercurial, gun-toting misanthrope named Bangley.
But when a random transmission beams through the radio of his 1956 Cessna, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life exists outside their tightly controlled perimeter. Risking everything, he flies past his point of no return and follows its static-broken trail, only to find something that is both better and worse than anything he could ever hope for.
Look for Peter Heller's new novel, The Last Ranger, coming soon!
Hig's wife is gone, his friends are dead, and he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, Jasper, and a mercurial, gun-toting misanthrope named Bangley.
But when a random transmission beams through the radio of his 1956 Cessna, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life exists outside their tightly controlled perimeter. Risking everything, he flies past his point of no return and follows its static-broken trail, only to find something that is both better and worse than anything he could ever hope for.
Look for Peter Heller's new novel, The Last Ranger, coming soon!
Reviews-
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Starred review from June 11, 2012
In the tradition of postapocalyptic literary fiction such as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Jim Crace’s The Pesthouse, this hypervisceral first novel by adventure writer Heller (Kook) takes place nine years after a superflu has killed off much of mankind. Hig, an amateur pilot living in Colorado, has retreated to an abandoned airport from which he flies sorties in “the Beast,” his vintage Cessna, over isolated pockets of survivors. His only neighbor is the survivalist Bangley, who’s sitting on a stockpile of weapons and munitions, and the only visitors are plague survivors who have descended into savagery. Hig’s one real comfort, besides the memory of his dead wife, Melissa, who fell victim to the flu while pregnant, is his dog, Jasper. But when that comfort is withdrawn, Hig flies west in search of the radio voice that called out to him three years before. Instead, he ends up being shot down and restrained by a doctor named Cima and her shotgun-toting father, a former Navy SEAL. With its evocative descriptions of hunting, fishing, and flying, this novel, perhaps the world’s most poetic survival guide, reads as if Billy Collins had novelized one of George Romero’s zombie flicks. From start to finish, Heller carries the reader aloft on graceful prose, intense action, and deeply felt emotion. Agent: David Halpern, the Robbins Office. -
August 1, 2012
A post-apocalyptic novel in which Hig, who only goes by this mononym, finds not only survival, but also the possibility of love. As in Cormac McCarthy's The Road, the catastrophe that has turned the world into its cataclysmic state remains unnamed, but it involves "The Blood," a highly virulent and contagious disease that has drastically reduced the population and has turned most of the remaining survivors into grim hangers-on, fiercely protective of their limited territory. Hig lives in an abandoned airplane hangar and keeps a 1956 Cessna, which he periodically takes out to survey the harsh and formidable landscape. While on rare occasions he spots a few Mennonites, fear of "The Blood" generally keeps people at more than arm's length. Hig has established a defensive perimeter by a large berm, competently guarded by Bangley, a terrifying friend but exactly the kind of guy you want on your side, since he can pot intruders from hundreds of yards away, and he has plenty of firepower to do it. Haunted by a voice he heard faintly on the radio, Hig takes off one day in search of fellow survivors and comes across Pops and Cima, a father and daughter who are barely eking out a living off the land by gardening and tending a few emaciated sheep. Like Bangley, Pops is laconic and doesn't yield much, but Hig understandably finds himself attracted to Cima, the only woman for hundreds of miles and a replacement for the ache Hig feels in having lost his pregnant wife, Melissa, years before. Although Heller creates with chilling efficiency the bleakness of a world largely bereft of life as we know it, he holds out some hope that human relationships can be redemptive.COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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March 1, 2012
Great expectations for this first novel, featuring a pilot lost in a world gutted by a flu pandemic. When he receives a random radio transmission, he realizes that he's not alone. Heller comes naturally by the edgy adventure promised here. A contributing editor at Outside Magazine and National Geographic Adventure, he is also author of Hell or High Water, an account of a daring 2002 whitewater expedition through eastern Tibet's Tsangpo Gorge--so remote and dangerous that it had never been fully navigated. With a 60,000-copy first printing.
Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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Starred review from July 1, 2012
Outdoor life has been the focus of Heller's award-winning nonfiction. In his gripping first novel, his gift for action and appreciation for prowess and courage fuel a harrowing yet charming postapocalyptic tale. The book's complex spell is cast by its tough yet sensitive can-do narrator, Hig. Happiest while trout fishing, he's a skilled hunter, daring pilot, and poet turned outdoorsy writer. Hig misses his wife, who died in the nation-crushing pandemic, dearly loves his dog, and is both leery of and grateful for Bangley, an older guy of few words but immense tenacity, military know-how, and firepower. They are holed up in a small Colorado airport, fighting off intermittent assaults by bands of murderous survivors. Richly evocative yet streamlined journal entries propel the high-stakes plot while simultaneously illuminating Hig's nuanced states of mind as isolation and constant vigilance exact their toll, along with his sorrow for the dying world as global warming worsens. Hig takes long, risky, meditative walks; tends the garden; and stubbornly takes to the air in a 1956 Cessna, searching for some remnant of civilization. Heller's surprising and irresistible blend of suspense, romance, social insight, and humor creates a cunning form of cognitive dissonance neatly pegged by Hig as an apocalyptic parody of Norman Rockwell a novel, that is, of spiky pleasure and signal resonance.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.) -
November 26, 2012
Hig, the hero of Heller’s thoughtful postapocalyptic novel, is a soft man in a hard world. One of the few survivors of a virus that wiped out most of humanity, Hig is better suited to reading poetry, fishing with his dog, and reminiscing than scratching out a hardscrabble existence in the land that used to be Colorado. If it weren’t for Bangley, a cantankerous, survivalist neighbor, roaming hordes of bandits would have killed Hig long ago. So, finding himself alive despite everything that’s happened, Hig must to forge a new life in a new world. Narrator Mark Deakins turns in a winning performance. He deftly alternates between Hig’s inner monologue, lush descriptions of the Colorado Rockies, and staccato prose. Throughout the book, Hig’s first-person narration is interrupted by the imagined voice of Bangley—an element that could be confusing for listeners. Deakins rises to the challenge, however, creating distinct voices for the characters and an enjoyable listening experience. A Knopf hardcover. -
Starred review from July 1, 2012
In the near future, a flu pandemic has decimated civilization, leaving only scattered pockets of survivors to fend for themselves. Hig is one of the healthy ones. For the past nine years, he has coexisted with a loner named Bangley at an abandoned airport in eastern Colorado. Trying not to think of his former life, Hig finds sanity in fishing, staring at the constellations, and flying his plane. With his dog, Jasper, Hig flies the perimeter of their safety zone in his 1956 Cessna. Bangley has a well-stocked arsenal, and between them, they keep a watchful eye for unfriendly invaders. On one of his forays, through broken static, Hig hears another pilot over the radio, an incident that haunts him until he goes in search of this other human being. Packing enough supplies to get him there and back, he takes off for western Colorado in search of the voice. During his six-week journey, he discovers more than he bargained for. VERDICT After an award-winning career as an adventure writer and NPR contributor, Heller has written a stunning debut novel. In spare, poetic prose, he portrays a soaring spirit of hope that triumphs over heartbreak, trauma, and insurmountable struggles. A timely must-read. [See Prepub Alert, 1/30/12.]--Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO
Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
- Junot Díaz, The Wall Street Journal "Extraordinary. . . . One of those books that makes you happy for literature."
- San Francisco Chronicle "This end-of-the-world novel [is] more like a rapturous beginning. . . . Remarkable."
- Glen Duncan, author of The Last Werewolf "For all those who thought Cormac McCarthy's The Road the last word on the post-apocalyptic world--think again. . . . Make time and space for this savage, tender, brilliant book."
- Minneapolis Star-Tribune "Heart-wrenching and richly written. . . . The Dog Stars is a love story, but not just in the typical sense. It's an ode to friendship between two men, a story of the strong bond between a human and a dog, and a reminder of what is worth living for."
- The Seattle Times "Heartbreaking"
- The New Yorker "A brilliant success."
- The Missourian "A book that rests easily on shelves with Dean Koontz, Jack London or Hemingway."
- Jennifer Reese, NPR "Dark, poetic, and funny."
- Outside "Terrific. . . . Recalling the bleakness of Cormac McCarthy and the trout-praising beauty of David James Duncan, The Dog Stars makes a compelling case that the wild world will survive the apocalypse just fine; it's the humans who will have the heavy lifting."
- Scott Smith, author of A Simple Plan and The Ruins "Take the sensibility of Hemingway. Or James Dickey. Place it in a world where a flu mutation has wiped out ninety-nine percent of the population. Add in a heartbroken man with a fishing rod, some guns, a small plane. Don't forget the dog. Now imagine this man retains more hope than might be wise in such a battered and brutal time. More trust. More hunger for love--more capacity for it, too. That's what Peter Heller has given us in his beautifully written first novel."
- Publishers Weekly (starred) "With its evocative descriptions of hunting, fishing, and flying, [The Dog Stars], perhaps the world's most poetic survival guide, reads as if Billy Collins had novelized one of George Romero's zombie flicks."
- The Dallas Morning News "The Dog Stars can feel less like a 21st-century apocalypse and more like a 19th-century frontier narrative (albeit one in which many, many species have become extinct). There are echoes of Grizzly Adams or Jeremiah Johnson in scenes where Heller lingers on the details of how the water in a flowing stream changes color as the sun moves across the sky."
- The Oklahoman "Full of action and hope.... One you'll not soon forget."
- The New York Journal of Books "A heavenly book, a stellar achievement by a debut novelist that manages to combine sparkling prose with truly memorable, shining, characters."
- Playboy "Gruff, tormented and inspirational, Heller has the astonishing ability to make you laugh, cringe and feel ridiculously vulnerable throughout the novel that will have you rereading certain passages with a hard lump in the pit of your stomach. One of the most powerful reads in years."
- Pam Houston, author of Contents May Have Shifted "The Dog Stars is a wholly compelling and deeply engaging debut."
- Aspen Daily News "Beautiful, haunting and hopeful. . . . Makes your breath catch and your heart ache."
- Salt Lake City Weekly "At times funny, at times thrilling, at times simply heartbreaking and always rich with a love of nature, The Dog Stars finds a peculiar poetry in deciding that there's really no such thing as the end of the world--just a series of decisions about how we live in whatever world we've got."
- The Stranger "What separates Heller's book from other End of Days stories is that it doesn't rely on the thematic fail-safes to tell the story--The Dog Stars is quite simply the story of what it's like to be alonet."
- Cincinnati City Beat "Heller has created a heartbreakingly moving love story. . . . It's an ode to what we've lost so far, and how we risk losing everything."
- Flavorwire "A stunning, hope-riddled end-of-the-world story. . . . Bound to become a classic."
- Julianna Baggott, author of Pure "Heller is a masterful storyteller and The Dog Stars is a beautiful tribute to the resilience of nature and the relentless human drive to find meaning and deep connections with life and the living."
- Shelf Awareness "Terrific . . . With echoes of Moby Dick, The Dog Stars . . . brings Melville's broad, contempla
