Il leopardo è scappato

by Stephen Harrigan, Nicola Manuppelli (translator)

Il piccolo Grady vive con la madre Bethie e il fratello maggiore Danny in un appartamento accanto alla casa dei nonni materni, a Oklahoma City. La famiglia è completata dagli zii Emmett e Frank, reduci della Seconda guerra mondiale che ancora faticano a rientrare nella vita ordinaria, e dalla zia Vivian. La vita di Grady e Danny è segnata dall’assenza del padre, un pilota morto in un incidente militare poco dopo la guerra. E tutta la famiglia tenta di sopperire a questa assenza.
Un giorno, durante una visita allo zoo con gli zii, Grady e Danny assistono a un evento un leopardo tenta di saltare oltre la staccionata del suo recinto, ma viene fermato appena in tempo. E poco dopo, la notizia che un leopardo è davvero fuggito dallo zoo scatena il panico in città. Le mamme rinchiudono in casa i bambini, bande di giovani armati scendono in strada per dare la caccia al felino. La presunta minaccia del leopardo agita l’intera comunità cittadina e funziona così da detonatore dei problemi non risolti, dalle tensioni razziali sempre pronte a scatenarsi ai difficili equilibri nei rapporti familiari. Fino all’epilogo inaspettato, a rappresentare la transizione dalle paure immaginarie dell’infanzia alle realtà complesse del mondo adulto.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Family, Book Club, Audiobook, Adult

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 18, 2022

About the author

Stephen Harrigan was born in Oklahoma City in 1948 and has lived in Texas since the age of five, growing up in Abilene and Corpus Christi.
He is a longtime writer for Texas Monthly, and his articles and essays have appeared in a wide range of other publications as well, including The Atlantic, Outside, The New York Times Magazine, Conde Nast Traveler, Audubon, Travel Holiday, Life, American History, National Geographic and Slate. His film column for Texas Monthly was a finalist for the 2015 National Magazine Awards.
Harrigan is the author of nine books of fiction and non-fiction, including The Gates of the Alamo, which became a New York Times bestseller and Notable Book, and received a number of awards, including the TCU Texas Book Award, the Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, and the Spur Award for Best Novel of the West.Remember Ben Clayton was published by Knopf in 2011 and praised by Booklist as a "stunning work of art" and by The Wall Street Journal as a "a poignantly human monument to our history." Remember Ben Clayton also won a Spur Award, as well as the Jesse H. Jones Award from the Texas Institute of Letters and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize, given by the Society of American Historians for the best work of historical fiction. In the Spring of 2013, the University of Texas Press published a career-spanning volume of his essays, The Eye of the Mammoth, which reviewers called “masterful” (from a starred review in Publishers Weekly), “enchanting and irresistible” (the Dallas Morning News) and written with “acuity and matchless prose.”(Booklist). His latest novel is A Friend of Mr. Lincoln.
Among the many movies Harrigan has written for television are HBO’s award-winning The Last of His Tribe, starring Jon Voight and Graham Greene, and King of Texas, a western retelling of Shakespeare’s King Lear for TNT, which starred Patrick Stewart, Marcia Gay Harden, and Roy Scheider. His most recent television production was The Colt, an adaptation of a short story by the Nobel-prize winning author Mikhail Sholokhov, which aired on The Hallmark Channel. For his screenplay of The Colt, Harrigan was nominated for a Writers Guild Award and the Humanitas Prize. Young Caesar, a feature adaptation of Conn Iggulden’s Emperor novels, which he co-wrote with William Broyles, Jr., is currently in development with Exclusive Media.
A 1971 graduate of the University of Texas, Harrigan lives in Austin, where he is a faculty fellow at UT’s James A. Michener Center for Writers and a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly. He is also a founding member of CAST (Capital Area Statues, Inc.) an organization in Austin that commissions monumental works of art as gifts to the city. He is the recipient of the Texas Book Festival’s Texas Writers Award, the Lon Tinkle Award for lifetime achievement from the Texas Institute of Letters, and was recently inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame. Stephen Harrigan and his wife Sue Ellen have three daughters and four grandchildren.

Reviews

[Therese · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a book club selection that I listened to on audio, narrated by George Guidall, which was fabulous. This selection reminds me of why I enjoy book clubs so much. Here’s a book and an author I knew nothing about, probably never would have picked up on my own, and was completely delighted by how much I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It’s a story that takes place in Oklahoma City in the post WWII world of the early 1950’s, about a leopard that escapes from the local zoo, sending the city into a frenzy, with mothers frightened for their children’s safety, and locals eager to go on safari and hunt down the man eater. Five year old Grady, who narrates the story, has just moved into his Grandparent’s home with his recently widowed Mom and older brother Danny, joining his aunt and two young uncles, both veterans suffering from PTSD, and father figures to the kids in the absence of their own Dad. It’s in this setting that Grady not only tells the story of the leopard, but reminisces about growing up at that time, including the love, loyalty and challenges growing up in a close knit family, young veterans traumatized by the war and trying to integrate back into civilian life, the segregation and racial tensions that were simmering at that time, and a Mother’s love for her children while dealing with her own grief.

At one point, Grady witnesses his Mom, an army nurse, saving a boy’s life, and realizes:
“The love of my mother was a feature of my world that I never gave a thought to. It was as powerfully present but unremarkable as the ground we stood on. There had been no beginning to it, there was no possibility it could ever be withdrawn. But tonight I was aware, maybe for the first time, that I was privileged to be the recipient of it. I had been jealous when she had called that stricken boy “honey”, and the fact that she had saved his life, had made her seem, for the last hour or so, utterly distant, not just a person who belonged to Danny and me anymore, but threatened to belong to the whole world.”

This book was a winner. If you decide to give it a try, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

[Candace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grady McClarty is enjoying retirement from his car dealership in Midland, Texas, when a historian in Oklahoma City asks him for an oral history of the time when a leopard got loose from the city zoo in 1952. Only five at the time, Grady is one of the few people who remembers the terror and excitement, and who played a role in the resolution. Rather than record, Grady writes a remembrance of the time and place, a beautiful expression of a nation and a family in broken-hearted yet optimistic times.

Grady, his mother, and his older brother move back to Oklahoma after his fighter test-pilot father is killed before Grady’s birth. They move in with his grandparents, younger aunt and two uncles, both World War Two veterans, as was his mother, who was an army nurse. As his consciousness develops, Grady begins to understand the tensions in his world of loving adults. His uncles drink too much, feel anger and PTSD– ignored at that time–and often put their dearly beloved nephews in awkward situations. They love to visit their grandfather’s car dealership and it’s there where they first sense racial tension of the times.

The escaped leopard brings everything to a boil. The city bristles with armed citizens and people taking pot-shots at all kinds of things. The boys are thrilled and terrified, and the uncles are armed. Mom and aunt are exasperated. The leopard is not to be seen.

What I love about Stephen Harrigan’s books is the way he infuses every page and situation with humanity, possibility, and grief. “Remember Ben Clayton” and “”Gates of the Alamo” are two wonderful historical novels that linger long in readers’ memories. “The Leopard is Loose” is a deceptively simple story that will linger in your mind

[Erin Cataldi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harrigan, Stephen. The Leopard is Loose. digital. 2021. Penguin Random House Audio.

Five year old, Grady McClarty, is about to have one of the most tumultuous and momentous summers of his young life. Post World War II Oklahoma City is fraught with racial tensions and a false sense of tranquility. When it's announced that a leopard has escaped from the local zoo, the city is gripped with fear and excitement. Grady and his older brother are equal parts terrified and intrigued, while their two uncles are excited at the prospect of bagging the wild animal. World War II may have ended before Grady was born but he can feel the effects all around him even if he can't understand it. His widowed mother, Bethie, is still grieving and fearful for her sons and his two uncles are erratic and suffering from alcoholism and PTSD, yet still determined to act as father figures for their nephews. Told through the naïve and youthful view of a five year old, The Leopard is Loose, tells what it's like to start viewing the world through a new lens. The underbelly of segregation, WWII trauma, family dynamics, and the complexity of right versus wrong are digested piece by piece by Grady, who is the heart and soul of the novel. Wonderfully narrated by George Guidall, whose distinct voice brings an authenticity and energy to young Grady. A coming of age novel that is filled with humanity, grief, possibility, and hope. - Erin Cataldi, Johnson Co. Public Library, Franklin, IN

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It has a bit of a retro feel in the best way—think of a more elaborate and less cartoonish Andy Griffith. It put me back in my grandparents house in the best way possible. It's ironic how we fixate on and fear of things that are pretty far outside the realm of possibilities when there are other more clear and present dangers around us. Might be more like 4.5 stars because it lacks a bit of depth, but I still enjoyed it completely.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was the most Oklahoma City book ever and my Okie heart could not handle how much I loved it.

Felt like To Kill a Mockingbird in places, overall a coming-of-age story of a young boy trying to understand life in the lens of the PTSD of his uncles who fought in WWII, the Civil Rights movement, and a leopard that escaped from the zoo

[Lin Salisbury · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Stephen Harrigan’s big-hearted coming-of-age novel, LEOPARD IS LOOSE, five-year-old Grady’s tranquil world is upended when a leopard escapes from the nearby zoo. It’s 1952 and Grady and his 7-year-old brother Danny live with their widowed mother, Bethie, in a two-bedroom backyard apartment across a small patch of yard from her parents and siblings. For most of Grady’s life, the family compound has created a sanctuary where they could each heal from the devastating trauma of the war.
Grady’s father was a test pilot in WWII and passed away before he was born. His uncles, Emmett and Frank, are combat veterans who suffer from PTSD; but with the best intentions, they try to fill in the gap left by the boys’ father’s death. When a leopard escapes from his pen at the Oklahoma City Zoo, Grady and Danny persuade their uncles to join the throngs of gun-toting citizens trying to track it down. The new threat to the community reveals the dark underbelly of the segregated community and suddenly everything that Grady thought to be true and safe and good is imbued with a new sense of distrust.
Harrigan has an astonishing ability to embody the mind of his five-year-old protagonist. Many an author tips over into treacle when writing from a child’s perspective, but Harrigan is not one of them. He does this in part by telling the story from the perspective of seventy-year-old Grady, but we see everything through a child’s eye.
Grady is the soul of the novel, and his mother Bethie is the heart. I was moved by Grady’s untarnished love for her. His unwavering belief in her goodness is aptly conveyed when a tornado strikes the town, and a young man is hit by lightning. Bethie, a nurse who’d worked with trauma patients in the war, acts quickly to pull the young man to safety and apply life-saving measures, and Grady, Danny, and Bethie’s parents are witnesses to her heroism.
“The love of my mother was a feature of my world that I never gave a thought to. It was powerfully present but unremarkable as the ground we stood on. There was no beginning to it and no possibility that it could ever be withdrawn. But tonight, maybe for the first time, I recognized that I was privileged to be a recipient of it. I had been jealous when she had first called that stricken boy “honey,” and the fact that she had saved his life had made her seem the last hour or so oddly distant, a person who belonged not just to Danny and me anymore but threatened to belong to the whole world.”
Grady need not worry; Bethie’s embrace is big enough for all of them.
I recommend LEOPARD IS LOOSE for fans of character-driven fiction. Listen to my Superior Reads interview with Stephen Harrigan on January 27 at 7:00 pm, Saturday, January 29 at 6:00 am, or on the web at WTIP.org. This is Lin Salisbury with Superior Reviews.

[Silvia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Il racconto dalla prospettiva di Grady, un bambino di cinque anni, dell’America degli anni ‘50, delle conseguenze della seconda guerra mondiale, delle tensioni razziali sempre pronte a scatenarsi, dei traumi causati dalla guerra soprattutto sulle persone, in particolare su quelle più vicine a noi e cosa significa stare vicino a persone che hanno affrontato quegli orrori e ne sono uscite traumatizzate e che vivono un lutto.
Una scrittura quasi poetica, lirica e molto dettagliata che nonostante la distanza temporale mi hanno permesso benissimo di immergermi nella Oklahoma City degli anni ‘50 e in un’atmosfera un po’ nostalgica.
Attraverso gli occhi di Grady ripercorriamo il passaggio dalle paure dell’infanzia a quelle di un’età più adulta, apprendendo di più del mondo che ci circonda, delle difficili relazioni umani e rendendoci conto che forse l’animale più pericoloso rimane comunque l’uomo.

[Aubrey Bass · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved reading this book. Written in a nostalgic style, the reader feels transported to a childhood typical of the 1950s. I loved that it was lighthearted yet occasionaly heavy with social issues so the reader can get a sense of how "off" certain things felt. I loved the innocence of a child's perspective and how his stories wove together. I especially appreciated that the novel was short, but no less enjoyable. I will be reading other books by this author.

[Aimee Moreland · Rating 4 out of 5]

4-4.5? This is a great book, definitely recommend. Post World War II family living in Oklahoma City. The writing is really beautiful and definitely has that American classic literature feel to it. It’s not the most riveting book, so, if you are a person who needs a lot of things to happen, you might be bored. The character development is fantastic and it was really enjoyable.

[J. Weaver · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this novel to be really well written. I enjoyed the brief glimpses into history, as well as the unique point of view of a child trying to make sense of WW II. Where the story fell flat for me was the mostly 1 dimensional characters (Bethie is largely the only exception), the loosely touched motivations of those characters and the refusal to dive into the issues brought up in the story. With the narrator being well into retirement, it would've lent a lot to the narrative if he put the wisdom of age into the memories instead of doggedly trying to maintain the point of view of a 5 year old boy.

[Deanna Flanagan · Rating 1 out of 5]

So slow and anti climactic

[David Dominguez · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the story, and found the characters relatable. The story takes the reader back to the perspective of childhood, when the adult world doesn’t always make sense, but the child interprets events as best they can, only to fully understand later on. Definitely worth reading!

[Carolyn Ragsdale · Rating 3 out of 5]

Historical novel read for my neighborhood book club and written by a neighbor’s father. Interesting to read all the Oklahoma and 1950s history tied together.

[Gary · Rating 3 out of 5]

A retelling of a true incident, when an Indian leopard escaped from the Oklahoma City zoo. The story is reimagined by an elderly man who experienced it while a five year old boy. It is a good read, well crafted.

[Jen Heininger · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a gift to me by my mother's husband... and he very eloquently wrote in the inscription "There is a leopard in the story, but the book is not about the leopard. Instead, it is about the relationship between a son and his mother...." That was the most beautiful and accurate description he could have written. It is a simple, lovely story, told from the perspective of a 5 year old boy. No bells and whistles... I enjoyed it very much.

[Kathleen Wells · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book. It is the story, told from a five-year-old's point of view, of a family in the 1950's struggling to cope with the after-effects of World War II. The young boy has fears and insecurities for which he isn't even sure of the origin. The culmination is the escape from the Oklahoma City Zoo (Oklahoma City is where they live) of a leopard, and the whole city goes crazy hunting for this leopard. In the end, it isn't always the things that cause us the most fear that are the biggest threat.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short and delightful read for anyone who grew up in OKC or has ties there. While it was nostalgic for places of bygone, it was informative on culture and attitudes that thankfully we are more distanced from now. I listened to the audio book and it was excellent.

[Henry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the book but The leopard that's loose out of its cage in the zoo because it is find of scary.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for a book discussion. I had never heard of the book before it was selected. Since several of the women I’m friends with in Goodreads are in the book discussion I’m not going to say anything more.

[Richard Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow...this book is so much more than the incident suggested by the title. It's a story of childhood joy and trauma, the intricacies of family relationships, confrontation of racial issues and the accepting of (and growing into) personal responsibility. In addition, the story clips along at a lively pace that made it hard for me to put my Kindle down. Looking forward to reading more of Stepen Harrigan's work.

[Virginia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The push to 4 stars has more to do with nostalgia.

[Bonnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked it. It’s been months since I’ve rated a novel 4 stars and years since I’ve rated a novel 4 stars by a white male author (mostly because they are a minority in the literary and historical fiction I tend to read - having a white male author writing a book with mostly white male characters is a DEI read for me, in the non-pejorative use of the term DEI).

The narrator is a Boomer in his retirement years retelling a story from when he was he 5 in 1952. The leopard getting loose from the Oklahoma City zoo (true) is the driver of the plot line, and as he fills in what else was going on in his household through the memories of his 5 year old self overlaid with the wisdom and internet-research-enabled aged self who helps fill in the gaps, he paints a portrait of the young Greatest Generation uncles and adored mom who’d come home from WWII, along with how an empathetic white boy started to experience seeing how black-skinned people were treated than differently than white-skinned people.

The pacing and storytelling made for an enjoyable read. As a GenXer, it brought up memories of stories from my greatest generation grandparents, my silent generation parents and their siblings and the wars that they served in, along with stories about Vietnam vets returning home with similar themes. I liked how the author could bring you back to memories of being and knowing 5 year olds while supplementing with the adult experience of recognizing what a 5 year old couldn’t have understood or known.

With one side of my family from the south and having both grown up visiting them and then having lived there for 6 years as an adult, I also connected with the vignettes of different kinds of white people relative to race: those like Grady’s granddad who lived within the racist society and not trying to change it but individually fair, and those like the uncle Frank who had more internalized society’s racist messages.

It was an interesting storytelling choice that worked for me that while his 70-year old self is present when he’s filling in plot details or interpretations a 5 year old couldn’t have known, this is not the 70 year old’s story. Indeed we get almost no window into the 70 year old’s life and the decades of personal and country history after being age 5 in 1952 - it’s very much the 5 year old white boy’s story in 1952 Oklahoma City.

Overall the book jacket and Goodreads summary is on point, and the biggest thing I liked was it was a fairly simple good story told by a good storyteller.

[S.A. Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

When the Oklahoma Historical Society asks seventy-year-old Grady McClarty for an oral history account of Oklahoma City’s “great leopard escape” of 1952, he gives them a written reminiscence instead, not just of his memories of the event but of all the frightening things he experienced the summer he was five years old. This book is what he gives them, and to me the real, live leopard is a metaphor for the rest of Grady's summer.

Though not about WWII, the plot hinges on the consequences of the war for Grady’s extended family. Grady and his older brother, Danny, don’t remember their father, whose post-war career as a test pilot was cut short by a fatal plane crash. Newly widowed ex-Army nurse Bethie moves back home, and the boys become part of a tight family circle consisting of Bethie’s parents, her two brothers, and one sister. The young uncles step up as father figures to Grady and Danny, but the war left them with invisible wounds. One uncle withdraws into himself, and the other drinks to forget. In their loving but sometimes questionable care, the boys find themselves in situations no child should be in. The truth is that the family is ruled by love and laughter with a good dose of tension and anger.

Along with the drama of the escaped leopard, the book touches on the ugliness of racial prejudice and segregation, the horrors of war, the altering of history, the consequences of mass hysteria, a child’s confusion about the world he lives in, and the unlikely heroism that can occur just when it’s needed.

The story was inspired by a real leopard escape from the Oklahoma City Zoo in the early 1950s, and the beginning of the book seemed so real I had to remind myself it wasn’t a memoir. The story is told totally from Grady’s viewpoint, and we see events as he interpreted them as a five-year-old. Vivid descriptions of life in the early Fifties—tv programming, cars, clothes, diners, church, amusements, etc.—add authenticity, and the complicated family relationships are believable. Rather than a page-turner, the book is slow and easy, like a trip down memory lane, which, for adult Grady, it was.

[Marion · Rating 4 out of 5]

I must say, this book took me by surprise. It achieves so much more than a simple recollection of a fictional recounting of an incident in the early 1950's when a leopard escaped from the zoo in Oklahoma City. At the outset, we meet 70-year-old Grady McClarty who has been asked to recount his experience as a 5-year-old when he and his brother were credited with being involved in the search for the big cat. George Guidall narrates the audio version of the book and is masterful at bringing the wisdom of age to the seemingly simple story and recreating the sense of awe, innocence and bewilderment of the 5 year old experience. Life at that time was certainly much simpler than today, but it still held the universal complexities of family life with its happiness and its tensions. 5 year-old Grady and his 6 year old brother are the sons of a mother, a WWII nurse, whose husband, a WWII fighter pilot, has died. They have moved in with their mother's family: her parents, a younger sister and two younger brothers who both fought in WWII and are suffering what is now called PTSD. These two are having a difficult time settling back into the pattern of their old lives. And they want to provide male role models for the boys who have no father to fill the role. Grady and his brother also witness community racial tensions and injustices and the hysteria of a town with a "maneating leopard" loose in its midst.

I personally felt transported in time to that era in my own history as a 5 year old who moved to Texas in the 1950's, with Hopalong Cassidy and Roy Rogers on our black and white TV, Dinah Shore singing "See the USA in your Chevrolet," and drinking out of different water fountains from the black people in town. So this book resonated with me with even deeper meaning. A wonderful reading experience.

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

This could be a four or five star review. Today it's a five.
I must admit that I love this type of books: nostalgic, descriptive, folksy, about simple people in a simpler time, having real challenges to deal with, touching relationships, and living, just living. Primarily I'm a reader of the books themselves, but in this case I alternated the written page and listening to the charming and down-to-earth narration by George Guidall as I driving on a road trip. Guidall narrates like the seventy-year-old writing the book, retelling the story from a five-year-old's eyes. It is charming and mesmerizing, sort of Garrison Keeler meets Andy Griffith.
The book describes an incident when a leopard escapes from the zoo, but it is more about a family, close because of love and circumstances, dealing with widowhood, PTSD from World War II, alcoholism, but most central, the relationship of a little boy and his mother.
The boy, Grady, says this after witnessing his mother, a nurse, saving a boy's life after being struck by lightning: “The love of my mother was a feature of my world that I never gave a thought to. It was as powerfully present but unremarkable as the ground we stood on. There had been no beginning to it, there was no possibility it could ever be withdrawn. But tonight I was aware, maybe for the first time, that I was privileged to be the recipient of it. I had been jealous when she had called that stricken boy “honey”, and the fact that she had saved his life, had made her seem, for the last hour or so, utterly distant, not just a person who belonged to Danny and me anymore, but threatened to belong to the whole world.”
This book is a keeper.

[Sofia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started this book without knowing much about it but it has turned out to be one of the best books I've ever read. Though it is framed around the search for an escaped leopard, the beauty of this book is how it so beautifully captures the story of a family still living in the shadow of WWII. For five year old Grady, the War is an abstract concept that he doesn't fully understand. For the adult characters, it is something real and traumatic that is still within their recent memory. This divide makes the young Grady's understanding of the world even more confusing, and as he explains through the narration. The way this story is told, narrated by a 70 year old man trying to put himself back in the mindset of his childhood is very unique and was one of the things I enjoyed most about the book. I especially liked the way Grady offered both his perspective from childhood and his perspective from adulthood, as he explains the events of the story and his relationships with the other characters. Through this lens, we get to know each of the characters intimately, as Grady tells us about his experience living with them as a child, combined with information he learned about them only as an adult.

[Tlwinky · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was very intrigued by this as it was based on a true event. But once I started, I listened to the audiobook, I found myself not really caring or engaged. I will admit that historical fiction is not my thing so I had that hurdle to get over first, but I found it really hard to believe that the story is told through memories of a five-year-old. I'm sitting here, trying to remember anything about when I was five years old, and I can remember big events like the start of kindergarten and a trip to the ER to get stitches in my head, but not day-to-day life so that bothered me through much of the story. Not only is Grady telling us events that happen each day after a leopard escapes from the local zoo, but he is also interpreting emotions throughout. So I might have enjoyed this more if the storyteller was older and his impressions were more justified and believable. This short story touches on the aftermath of war and segregation in the US, but it stayed very much on the surface because of it being told through the eyes of a five-year-old so I found it difficult to get anything more out of this story except mild interest.

[Mary Robideaux · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm surprised that this book rose to a 5-star because I thought it dragged at times and didn't elicit much excitement. But good authors know what they are doing, and Stephen Harrigan is a good author. (I recommend his previous fiction.) So the plot is not supposed to be an exciting adventure about capturing a leopard. Grady sees the world as a five-year-old with all its terrors and mysteries and little boy joys. He knows the adults are trying to keep some knowledge from him but he is also confused when they try to explain things to him. Harrigan does a great job of reminding us of what it was like to discover the world when most things made no sense.
He also captures the unbalance of trying to recapture a prewar time irrevocably changed. The story parallels that of the author's own experience; so there is a lot of nostalgia. I live in Oklahoma City but didn't grow up here, and I was able to enjoy the areas of the city he describes and connect historical events. The leopard escaping is a true story.
The book captured me in a beautiful way. Don't give up if it's a little slow for you. It is a gem.

[Susie Turk · Rating 3 out of 5]

I give this book a 3.5. It was really well written, however, I found myself bored. It was a unique perspective in that it was told as if an older man is reflecting back on an experience he had as a 5 year old boy to provide for a historical society. I liked the aspect of it being a man reflecting and sharing his perspective as a child. Grady lives with his brother who is a year older and their mother post WWII. Their father who was a fighter pilot died in a plane crash so Grady's mother Bethie moves into her parents' property along with Bethie's two brothers Frank and Emmett who have also returned from the war. The family helps to raise Grady and his brother. The story focuses on a leopard who has jumped out of his enclosure in the zoo and is at large. The book explores Grady's uncles PTSD and how they drink to cope with it. It explores the racism and segregation of post war Oklahoma. It explores the fear and hysteria that media stirs up sharing constantly how dangerous this leopard is comparing it to one in India that killed many people and how many react with bluster and foolishness grabbing their guns to go hunt this leopard.

[Jerry Edward Stephens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most readers will see this novel as simple fiction. I think that it really is historical fiction. After all, a real life leopard escape occurred from the Zoo in Oklahoma City in 1950. The loose leopard caused a great deal of fear and consternation throughout the city and its suburbs. Stephen Harrigan once lived in Oklahoma City. He heard, as a child, many versions of the tale of the leopard escaping from the Zoo. He has now added his personal perspective resulting in a novel which, in addition to its fictional nature, is really something of a biography as well. The novel succeeds perfectly in the many respects. Harrigan is particularly good at crafting and telling a story. The reader is pulled along with a satisfying and enjoyable version of believable events. But, Harrigan is also a master at creating believable characters to populate his stories. This novel ends somewhat differently from the 1950 escape and recapture. I won't give any of that difference away here. This is a well crafted novel for the reader seeking a genuinely well told story. This is one novel that the discriminating reader can turn to and be satisfied with the story told.