Deprivation

by Roy Freirich

After a mysterious, silent child is found abandoned on the beach clutching a handheld video game, residents and tourists alike find themselves utterly unable to sleep. Exhaustion impairs judgment, delusions become hysteria, and mob rule explodes into shocking violence. Told from three Chief of Police Mays tries to keep order, teenaged tourist Cort and her friends compete in a dangerous social media contest for the most hours awake, while local physician and former Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Sam Carlson battles his guilt over a student's suicide and the blurriness of his own insomnia, to try to treat the sleepless - until he and the child must flee the violent mob that blames the child for the epidemic.

Audible Audio

Published March 3, 2020

About the author

Born in New York and educated at Beloit College in Wisconsin, author Roy Freirich has been Associate Editor for the nationally renowned "Beloit Poetry Journal," and for the national desk of "The New York Times."

He received a Master’s Degree in English Literature from the University of Michigan, where he wrote and co-directed "Persona Non Grata," an Ann Arbor International Film Festival prize winner.

As a screenwriter, Roy wrote "City of Silence" for DreamWorks, "Frontin'," with his wife Debrah, for Fox Searchlight, and the screenplay for the Sony release, "Fragments," adapted from his own novel, "Winged Creatures."

“Fragments" stars Forest Whitaker, Kate Beckinsale, Dakota Fanning,, Guy Pearce, Jennifer Hudson,, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Josh Hutcherson.

Reviews for "Winged Creatures".:


"...stark, impressive debut... a tightly knit ensemble drama... emotionally charged."

-- Publisher's Weekly


"A riveting debut novel about the aftermath of a mass shooting in a fast food restaurant. The author achieves the amazing feat of following an utterly disparate cast of dramatis personae through the vicissitudes of their lives as they are irrevocably scarred and changed forever. A sure-fire page-turner and, without question, has great movie written all over it, vividly reminiscent of Atom Egoyan's great The Sweet Hereafter."

-- Rex Pickett, author of SIDEWAYS

A lone gunman enters a fast-food diner, kills two patrons, and then turns the gun on himself. From that depressingly familiar scenario, first-novelist and veteran screenwriter Freirich spins a highly emotional story of how the survivors deal with the tragedy... As the narrative flashes between the survivors’ desperate attempts to cope and the fateful events of that day, Freirich employs a hyper, pop-culture-obsessed narrative voice to home in on the fleeting nature of existence. Soon to be made into a film, which will raise its visibility, this well-crafted debut packs an emotional wallop.

-- Joanne Wilkinson, on BookList


“When a life is shattered, what is left to hold onto? Roy Freirich’s group portrait of the aftermath of a random shooting delves into areas of the psyche rarely explored with such precision and delicacy. A relentlessly suspenseful and mesmerizing novel from a brilliantly original writer. Winged Creatures is an astounding debut.”

-- David Angsten, author of DARK GOLD