Coffin Moon

It is the winter of 1975, and Duane Minor is back in Portland, Oregon after a tour in Vietnam. He is fighting to control his anger and his drinking, to hold his young marriage together and to keep the nightmares at bay. Life gets more complicated when, after a tragedy, his thirteen-year-old niece Julia is sent across the country to live with him and his wife, Heidi. Guided by Heidi's love and patience, the three of them slowly start to become a family.

Then Minor crosses the wrong man. John Varley is a criminal with a bloody past and a trail of bodies behind him. He sleeps by day under loose drifts of earth and grows teeth in the light of the moon. In a brutal act of retaliation, Varley kills Heidi, leaving Minor broken with guilt and Julia consumed by rage. Vengeance is the only thing that still binds the two together.

Their hunt draws them into the dark world around Varley: immortal, undead children, makers of silver bullets, and a crowd of broken men drawn to his ferocity. They follow his path of destruction from the grim alleys of 1970s Portland to the empty highways of the Northwest and the snowbound plains of North Dakota, until Varley turns his savage power back on them. The novel asks who will prevail, who will survive, and what is left of our humanity when the thirst for revenge outweighs everything else.

Keith Rosson is also the author of Fever House.