Reap

A New York Times Noteworthy Novel

Taut, riveting, and unflinching, REAP draws readers into the dangerous and claustrophobic backwoods of Northern Vermont to witness a hard-edged, quick-moving, and violent story charged with fate, bad blood, and family secrets, tempered by a fine lyric sensibility and an awareness of people and place that sings with evocation and authenticity. A masterwork of literary crime fiction heralded alongside Denis Johnson, Russell Banks, and Robert Stone.

THE NEW YORK TIMES SUNDAY BOOK REVIEWRemarkable. Intoxicating. Arresting. Poetic. A tale of macho violence and alternative horticulture in a creepy edge-of-the-world setting. The body count is high, and the violence persuasive. Most remarkable is the evocation of the territory, the Gothic tangle of native forest and exotic cash crop that mirrors the characters’ claustrophobic inner landscapes [and] the grimly poetic images scattered throughout, like flashes of submerged lives never quite reeled in.

SUNDAY CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALERA bloody beauty. Reap illuminates worlds of darkness. A dramatic reminder of the mystery and majesty of the wild places that exist in both man and nature.

LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEWA complex portrait of a group of people whose interlocking fates snap into place with gruesome repercussions and of a boy who unwittingly stumbles into adulthood like a bird dog into a wolf trap.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLYHarrowing. Absorbing. Unpredictable. Dangerous. Bucolic and eerie, it probes the mysteries of growing as plants people and situations twist inexorably in unpredictable, dangerous directions. A progressively more harrowing, absorbing tale.

BOOK MAGAZINETranscends the typical. Harrowing. Inevitable. Rickstad renders dark, often violent characters with such elegance that we will embrace them long after they’ve opted for the choice that is clearly wrong.

BOOKLISTRickstad pulls back the veneer of the bucolic wilderness of northern Vermont and finds trouble in paradise. Colorful, marginal, and often violent characters, and the undertone of violence, desperation, and drug dealing as a way of life underscores the fact that the country joins the inner city in becoming a modern American wasteland.

WEEKLY ALIBIA haunting, dark story that seethes with human emotion. Turning each page is like opening the door to an open field.