This is a dark and powerful debut novel set in the hardscrabble American heartlands. 'If I knew for a certain'ty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life...' After trying to help Benjamin Pearl, an undernourished, nearly feral eleven-year-old boy living in the Montana wilderness, social worker Pete Snow comes face-to-face with the boy's profoundly disturbed father, Jeremiah. With courage and caution, Pete slowly earns a measure of trust from this paranoid survivalist itching for a final conflict that will signal the coming End...