Rough Animals: An American Western Thriller

by Rae DelBianco

For readers of Cormac McCarthy, Denis Johnson, and Ron Rash, the electrifying contemporary western thriller where Breaking Bad meets No Country for Old Men: now in paperback.
 
Since their father's untimely death, Wyatt Smith and his twin sister, Lucy, have scraped by alone on the family ranch in Box Elder County, Utah. That is until one morning when, after spotting one of their steers lying dead in the field, Wyatt is hit in the arm by a hail of gunfire that takes four more cattle with it. The shooter: a fearsome girl-child with a TEC-9 in her left hand and a shotgun in her right. They hold the girl captive, but she breaks loose overnight and heads south into the desert. With the realization that the loss of cattle will mean the certain loss of the ranch, Wyatt has no choice but to go after her and somehow find restitution.
 
Wyatt's decision sets him on an epic twelve-day odyssey through a nightmarish underworld that pits him not only against the primordial ways of men and the brutally unforgiving landscape but also against himself. For the first time, he is forced to look at who he is and what he’s capable of, and how those hard truths set him irrevocably apart from the one person he’s ever really known and loved. Steeped in a mythic, wildly alive language of its own, and gripping from the first gunshot to the last, Rough Animals is a tour de force from a powerful new voice.

Genres: Fiction, Westerns, Contemporary, Thriller, Animals, Crime, Literary Fiction

312 pages, Paperback

First published June 5, 2018

About the author

Praise for ROUGH ANIMALS:

"A brilliant, incandescent debut that will remind everyone of a young Cormac McCarthy."
-Philipp Meyer, author of AMERICAN RUST and Pulitzer Prize finalist THE SON

"With some of Denis Johnson's flamboyant lyricism, when it comes to longings for transcendence, and with more than a little of Cormac McCarthy's implacable vision of a world in which we survive by doing the things most others could not bring themselves to do."
- Jim Shepard, National Book Award finalist and The Story Prize winning author of LIKE YOU'D UNDERSTAND ANYWAY and THE WORLD TO COME

"I dare you to draw a breath from beginning to end."
- Julia Glass, National Book Award winning author of THREE JUNES and A HOUSE AMONG THE TREES

PUBLISHED JUNE 5 2018

Rae DelBianco grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where she raised livestock from childhood, founding a beef cattle operation at fourteen. She attended Duke University as a Robertson Scholar and was later accepted to Curtis Brown's six-month novel writing course in London, where her work was chosen by internationally bestselling author Jeffrey Archer as runner-up in a 100 word story contest. She is an alumnus of literary magazine Tin House's Summer Workshop, as well as an Instagram influencer (@rae.delbianco) in literary fiction, and currently living outside New York City. Represented by Jonny Geller of Curtis Brown (UK, International, film) and Chris Clemans of Janklow & Nesbit (US), ROUGH ANIMALS is her first novel.

Reviews

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

A huge thank you to Bonnie Brody!!!! Her review gave me chills.
I don’t gravitate toward westerns...but I can’t endorse this book highly enough. It’s one of the best books I’ve read this year.

The writing is an sensational experience!
The characters with blood and death being a constant threat— death a personal memory- injuries- running - fiercely tearing of limbs - gutting with teeth- avoiding another man’s trigger- dying too much like cattle— battling the elements—
thunderstorms—
lightening—
are so deeply in your thoughts.... characters so real ... they are a part of you —best book friends forever.

Nothing I can write will do justice to this book. It’s an experience like no other... a journey that continues to explode page after page.

Wyatt and Lucy Smith - ( twins) - their father - and the mysterious wild child...
will support you through this journey. I didn’t even hesitate whether or not I could handle the fighting - the blood- the hell- because the characters
we’re so compelling and heartfelt- I wanted to be where they were. If they were facing danger - I was going with them.

“Out here the wind could come like something four-legged, like something plodding in drafted rhythm under an ox’s yoke, or it could come like an ocean, a body that, if it had still waters, they were beyond your reach and not what you were made to breathe. If it were like an ocean tonight perhaps the girl would be washed away come morning, washed away with the whole history of it all and his tracking out here and his forefathers footsteps across it years before alongside those of however many of the mules had made it this far into the journey. And if he woke early enough to still see the bloodstain in the sand where she’d lain, Then a few more rushes of wind would surely take that away as well, and then you could go home. You could go home, and it would not be like it had never happened, but in not being able to see it anymore it was still as if something had been undone”.

There were phenomenal sentences to highlight on every page that I finally just stopped trying to hold on too tightly- and just surrendered to the books flow. It was incredible to do that.
It’s very hard to believe that this is a debut..., ‘can’t possibly be’. This writer has skills and skills and skills!!!


I’ll be surprised if the film people aren’t coming after Rae DelBianco already.

It’s soooo visual.
Everything is ‘enhanced’ as if on steroids....
sights, smells, temperatures, inner grabbling with issues between right and wrong...moral choices...

It’s brutal - beautiful- with sweetly tender moments.

Thank You Skyhorse Publishing, Arcade Publishing, Netgalley,
and Rae DelBisnco

[Canadian Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

What’s rougher than having your cattle killed and you are about to lose your property because of it? Why not chase down the 14 year old thug and get her to reimburse you? Yes - it’s a her. And the game of chase begins in the desert and involves the cartel.
A gritty, gruesome read- eyeball sockets missing; torsos ripped; heads scalped. Gulp.
They are rough animals as is the writer with a cigarette dangling from her youthful fingers on the book flap. But, don’t let that prevent you from picking this up. There are moments of reflection in this dry, isolated story. Moments where one can see what one would do for their land; for their family; Hard truths recognized.

A riveting, at times repulsive, read. Writing that will hold you there in the moment where you you can feel the heat of the sun and the dry desert air.

DelBianco will have a following for sure. Nice debut; great writing. I am struggling between 3.5 and 4. The connection with the Wyatt I just never made. And the relationship with his twin for me, was just weird.

[Angela M · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is gritty, violent, bloody and not exactly what I usually read, but it also has beautiful thick prose that I had to read slowly at times and a story that grabbed a hold of me from the beginning even though it took a while to discover motivations. Twins Wyatt and Lucy Smith have enough cattle to barely pay the mortgage and keep the family land. Five years after their father’s death, which we are told was accidental, some cattle are killed, enough of a loss to jeopardize their meager livelihood. Before you know it, Wyatt is on a chase for the young girl who killed the cattle and remains a mystery to him until the chase takes him into the middle of the dealings of a drug cartel . Could a not quite teen age girl be this dangerous, this involved? What lengths would Wyatt go to in order to recover the loss? I was amazed to see ! In between the narrative of his journey, there are flashbacks to his childhood and as the journey progresses, so much of the past is revealed.

If you are sensitive to the violence this may not be for you. If it wasn’t for my friend Elyse’s fabulous review, (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) I may not have read this. So thanks, Elyse ! In spite of my discomfort and not usually enjoying books with this kind of a chase, this much suspense, I found so much more of a story here than I expected and I can’t give it less than 4 stars.


I received an advanced copy of this book from Arcade Publishing through Edelweiss.

[Zoeytron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Copy furnished by Net Galley for the price of a review.

You don't want to mess with folks from Box Elder County out there in Utah, where even the young are born old.  Harken to the lowing of the cattle and the rhythmic thrum of the cicadas. Off aways, there lies the desert, dead quiet, prickling in its silence.  Make no mistake, this tale is vivid and visceral, gritty and gut wrenching. 

You are going to want to keep an eye on this new author.  The images she creates with her words will come alive in your mind.  Big thanks to Elyse, who called this novel to my attention.

[Fran · Rating 4 out of 5]

Twins Wyatt and Lucy Smith could not be more devoted to each other. Five years ago, their lives drastically changed when Lucy went hunting with father and mistook him for an elk. Wyatt never faulted Lucy but still she "snapped". Now, she seems unaffected by the struggle created by this misfortune. By the tender age of twenty three years, the storms of life were already etched on Wyatt's face. Working their cattle ranch in Box Elder County, Utah, foreclosure seemed likely when a mud covered feral girl, wielding a TEC 9 and a shotgun, killed several steer and injured Wyatt's upper arm.

Knowledge of the forest and a barefoot, silent approach enabled Wyatt, despite his blood soaked arm, to catch the girl. He tied her to a chair, the only piece of furniture in Lucy's bedroom. The loss of these steer signaled the loss of the ranch...unless...$4,600 could be raised. When the girl escaped by breaking a window, Wyatt left the ranch in Lucy's care determined to find the girl and demand what was owed for the cattle.

Wyatt started his search, by truck, heading toward Salt Lake City, Utah. He tracked her by smelling the air, pursuing her the way he would hunt for an animal. In his attempt for restitution, Wyatt and the unnamed girl encountered outlaw bikers, meth labs, drug cartels, and coyotes. Often violent gunfire from rivals ensued. Wyatt and the girl "dance" between friend or foe status. He thinks of home in Box Elder County through flashbacks. Interspersed throughout, we witness childhood lessons in the harsh realities of nature and survival as presented to Wyatt and Lucy by their father.

Wyatt's brutal journey of revenge and retribution was unexpected. It was cruel and devastating. The roughness, however, was tempered by the beautiful prose by debut author Rae DelBianco. This modern day western thriller was an intense read with bloody gunfights and hungry coyotes out for human blood. Clear your calendar, sit down, read and enjoy "Rough Animals" by Rae DelBianco. I definitely did!

Thank you Arcade/ Skyhorse Publishing and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "Rough Animals".

[Paul Falk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rae Del Bianco penned a well-written tale with a storyline that swung far and wide. Just over halfway through, about the time I was considering that the novel might have been better suited as a novella, the scene took a devilish twist. It was just what it needed. Actually, what I needed. The main characters were well-drawn. Into the home stretch, I was unaware of the blockbuster ending that waited ahead.

23-year-old Wyatt Smith lives with his twin sister Lucy out in the sticks in Box Elder County, Utah. Try as they might, they're barely scraping by on their small cattle farm. As if it wasn't already bad enough, it soon worsened. They're precious livestock had been attacked. Several had been shot to death. With shotgun in hand, Wyatt confronted the attacker. It turned out to be a girl. One that had been specially trained. A gunfight ensued. She fled. It was never fully explained what brought the girl to their remote farm in the first place. No reasonable explanation was suggested for her to engage in such rampage.

The murder of the livestock had been enough to sink the farm that had already been teeter tottering on the edge of bankruptcy. The assassin needed to pay with either restitution or her life. The former was preferred. The young girl gave the appearance of a runaway which did not contribute to being a dependable candidate to make restitution. It made no rhyme nor reason to chase after her. But with that said, Wyatt pursued the girl while Lucy tended to the animals and farm. It was a helluva chase. Like trying to catch the wind.

With no love lost between the two, fate would see that their paths would cross again. For Wyatt there was no turning back. Blinded by revenge, it was time to pay up or face the ultimate consequences. A shattering twist had unknowingly awaited them. They had temporarily resigned themselves to form an unholy alliance. In the midst of a drug trade, they had walked into a gangland ambush. Battled bloody and outnumbered, they watched their comrades drop one by one. Finally in the end it came down to just the two of them facing off against terrible odds. Time and bullets were running out.

My thanks to NetGalley and Arcade Publishing / Skyhorse Publishing for this ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

[Sharon Metcalf · Rating 4 out of 5]

More than once I stopped to question what I was doing reading Rough Animals - filled as it was with hardship, graphic violence, drug deals and death.     The answer each time?     Unquestionably, the writing.   Young author Rae DelBianco fashioned her story with intelligent, thought provoking and marvellously descriptive writing.   Words, not beautiful or flowery but gritty and coarse,  completely suited to the Utah desert setting.    How many beautiful descriptions of sunsets have I read over the years but never have I seen nightfall described this way  The sky was fanning with darkness like gangrene spreading....   and yet in the context it was utterly perfect.  

Right from the outset I was intrigued about the characters history but also their future prospects.   The random shooting of their livestock  likely meant they'd lose their ranch.   I could  feel their desperation.   DelBianco managed to simultaneously repulse me and extract my sympathy with her words.     The lengths taken to wrest recompense for what was taken from them was extreme and this was a study in "the pain of having to kill to survive".  

I daresay this author has a sparkling career ahead of her if this debut is any indication.   My congratulations to her and my thanks to Skyhorse Publishing and NetGalley for the digital review copy received in exchange for an honest review.

[Marialyce · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 I should have know this book was not for me stars

I should have know that since this book has been compared to those of Cormac McCarthy that is would not be for me. I should have known when it stated that it was gritty, another word for lots of violence that it wasn't for me. I should have known that since this was a contemporary Western novel, a genre that I don't do well with, that this book was just not for me. However, I persevered probably because the prose written was quite extraordinary and the story line which had hints of incest and life in an environment so rough and tumble that it blocked out any semblance of a life I knew, could make me comprehend better the nature of some that drive them to violence and death.

Wyatt and Lucy twins, raised by their father, develop an extremely close relationship. They are one with each other always for I am you and you are me. When one morning Wyatt discovers that one of his steers has been fatally shot he decides to chase the shooter, a young teenage girl. In a shootout more of his herd is killed and Wyatt and the girl both wounded begin a cat and mouse chase through the west that is comprised of dangerous motorcycle gangs, meth labs, and marauding coyotes. This becomes a fevered dream of failed lost hope and unfulfilled desires.

I wished I had liked it better, although for many this will be a novel that focuses on the underbelly of what passes for society that is hidden, malevolent and violent.

Thanks you to Rae DelBianco, Skyhorse Publishing and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book to be published on June 5,2018

[Bonnie Brody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rae Delbianco has an inimitable voice all her own. Though some of the author blurbs compare her to other novelists, I found her to be a poetic voice in the wilderness, both literally and figuratively. Ms. Delbianco is able to take horrific scenes and make your heart weep. She is able to write about things seemingly mundane and make you feel that you'll never experience them the same way again. That this is a debut novel is difficult to believe. The author writes with a surety and wisdom that belies her young age.

Twenty-three year old Wyatt Smih and his twin sister Lucy live on an isolated ranch in Box Elder, Utah. The ranch is barely making it and when Wyatt discovers that some of his cattle have been killed, he goes after the person responsible. He is appalled that whoever shot his cattle has even eaten some of it raw. When he finds the killer a gun battle ensues and he is shot in his arm. He prevails however and is aghast when he discovers that she is a girl, a wild child, almost feral. The cost of his lost cattle is $4600 and Wyatt needs this money or he will lose the ranch. The girl says she doesn't have it but after Wyatt's aggressive determination, she tells him she knows where to find it. Thus begins a trek from hell to get the money.

Wyatt and his twin Lucy are very close, so close that "they weren't twins, they weren't two, they were fire. And a thing without edges". Their father has been dead for six years and is referred to, throughout the book as 'the father'. Lucy has told Wyatt that while hunting she inadvertently shot the father, thinking he was an elk. "What to do when the father was gone and they were too young but had been born old and youth had been nothing but a season in which calves were new and then butchered the next fall." Wyatt struggles with his vision as he only has one eye, the other lost in an accident that occurred years ago.

As Wyatt follows the wild girl across the desert, he learns the meaning of violence, of killing. He understands self-preservation and watches carefully those who know nothing about caring for others. He learns to survive by means he would never have dreamed of, hovering between life and death, viewing himself with a new eye. He wondered, "if you died would you take the violence you've committed with you or would if remain as a scar upon the earth". For Wyatt has now become a killer, fighting those who would keep him from getting his $4600, fighting elements that care nothing for his life, fighting so that he can return to Lucy who he'd never been away from before.

Throughout the book I wondered about 'the father' and hypothesized many a scenario. As the novel traveled back and forth from Wyatt's physical journey to his internal one, the reader is fully caught up in what he experiences in the here and now and his life with Lucy. The girl is a puzzle, a piece of life that seems to have been loaned from Dante's inferno and the league of fallen angels all at once. I thought of her as a psychopathic Wonder Woman.

This book is sure to make my top ten of the year. Ms. Delbianco has a dark, poetic vision, one that does not inspire hope but never loses sight of connection and following your north star.

[Melissa Crytzer Fry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Phew! That’s how I feel after having read this debut by Rae DelBianco. In many respects, this novel could be considered both gruesome and heart-wrenching in its depiction of human darkness and fortitude. Were I to assign a theme, it would be blood.

Described within is a fast-paced, and yet simultaneously slow 12-day odyssey. The book highlights three characters fighting the elements, the bad guys, themselves, nature, their pasts … And, as someone who has lived in the Sonoran Desert for 20-plus years, I appreciated the depiction of Utah’s own unforgiving environs.

The author’s writing style takes the reader on a forward-paced journey, through sentences that roll out like the desert plains – that is to say they lack punctuation and can sometimes be up to a quarter-page long. Those rolling sentences are also interspersed with sentence fragments. Many times the descriptions are so gorgeous, you are swept up in them, moved along like grains of desert sand. But other times – for me – I felt the style was almost a disservice to the author’s incredible talent. (i.e. I think the reader's brain trains itself, after a certain number of exposures to these sentences, to ‘let go,’ and stop trying to interpret and revel in each word – to read blindly and let the mind flow in the same way). For me, that meant I felt I missed a lot of gorgeous sensory prose and details I’d have enjoyed savoring bit by bit. As hard as I tried for this not to be the case, the grammarian in me begged for commas and periods that would allow me to savor every carefully chosen word.

That said, I understand this literary device. This is a highly literary novel – nothing of it remotely commercial. The structure, I believe, served the purpose of moving the plot forward -- illustrating the arduous creep of time, of living and of struggling. And it was likely pointedly symbolic. I can’t hop inside the author’s head to know for certain, but it could have symbolized the flow of blood, the never-ending torture we put ourselves through over past mistakes, our drive to survive.

And, in the end, I came away feeling as though I’d read something bloody, yes, but also incredibly insightful and remarkably good. NOTE: If you shy away from bloody man vs. man scenes and animal cruelty (whether you see that as hunting, or turning a blind eye to domestic livestock suffering or pet abuse), this may not be the book for you. If you are interested in tough books that examine human nature and books chock full of symbolism (that book jacket cover–and its tie to the box elder -- and the tree’s symbolic tie to men and flesh … WOW... And the girl and what she symbolizes!), then this might be perfect for you. Oh, and certainly -- if you enjoy unapologetic female characters, this book should be on your nightstand!

One thing is certain: I will be looking forward to more from this YOUNG literary author, whose background is equally as impressive as her debut.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me a while to get through this book and I will try to sort out why. First I should say I am acquainted with the author in social media and really love her artistic sensibilities and her love for literature.

I think what I love in literature is different from what she loves in literature, so it is more that her book is not a match for my reading tastes. She posts frequently about Cormac McCarthy, Denis Johnson, and John Steinbeck. And this is western through and through, although the setting is more modern than many westerns. Set in Utah, in a landscape open and bleak enough that it is easy to imagine lawlessness. The characters are young, tough, and have to be wiling to risk everything to survive; there is still an underlying sense that they might not. The stakes are high.

I really connected to the story in the beginning, where the twins who are barely scraping by on the family ranch without their parents, and their cattle have been killed. They discover a girl who is the shooter, take her hostage, she escapes, and shenanigans ensue. This is also where I found myself disconnecting from the story, which seemed to turn into a series of shootups and drug dealings and bodily injury. It was hard to tell which moment was the most climactic moment. It felt like an action film, where the whole point is the explosions and fight sequences - these are the movies I never watch. So as you can see, this just isn't the book for me. I wanted to go back to the sad family story, and the twins survival, but more in the emotional longterm sense, less in the immediate gunslinger sense. I unfortunately found myself skimming through those parts, and they made up a large portion of the book. (I should have known this wouldn't be for me!)

I do love that we are seeing this new wave of westerns, from the alternate hippos of Sarah Gailey to the historical explorations of Carys Davies to the brutal setting of Western Australia in Tim Winton's work. I feel like readers who hook into this movement will also enjoy this book.

Thanks to the publisher and author for providing access to this title through NetGalley. It came out June 5th.

[Stephen Welch · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a bit of a journey getting to a 4-star rating (as I'll explain), but I heartily recommend Rough Animals.

As shared here on Goodreads, I've highlighted numerous, beautifully-written passages, turns-of-phrase, descriptions of setting sometimes breathtakingly rendered, evocative and on-point (I grew up in the rural West). Even the violence that DelBianco threads throughout the narrative -- it, like the landscape, are omnipresent, almost sentient, characters in their own right -- has a bleak beauty. I loved the intriguing, un-named Girl. The storyline is compelling, and at times I couldn't put the book down.

I'm a huge fan of Cormac McCarthy, and as the publishers promoted DelBianco as a literary heir, I very much looked forward to Rough Animals (the promotion worked, in other words). I won't rehash some of the negatives shared by others here, but for the first 25% of the novel I admit I struggled a bit with some of the metaphors and dialog. This smoothed out however, and in the end I was glad I kept on. It was well worth it.

I look forward to DelBianco's next work (I hope it's another Western, but if not, that's more than ok!).

SRW

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

am not a Cormac McCarthy fan but sometimes I surprise myself. For example, I very much enjoyed Sisters Brothers, The Fourth of July Creek (Smith Henderson) and The Sons (Phil Meyer). The advance reviews of Rough Animals were so strong that I decided to give this book a chance.

But I found out it wasn't really for me. The writing is very strong with wonderful, fully fleshed out word-images and I have no doubt this author has what it takes to be a real contender. The plot -- a man named Wyatt Smith who, along with his twin sister, tends to the family's isolated Utah ranch and barely scrapes by, until a girl barely into her teens shows up and kills some of their cattle—along with their hopes of financial survival. The journey into the desert, along with the ensuing recognition of who he really is, provides an almost mythical overlay to the story.

Those who enjoy Mr. McCarthy's writing or modern Westerns, will surely find Rough Animals to be enormously gratifying. Unfortunately, I am not the right reader.

[Bethany · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those reviews that pains me to write, because I really wanted to like this book and I think the author is talented. However, if I'm being honest with myself, there were a few things in this book that just didn't work for me.

First, and biggest downfall, was what I perceive as an overuse of metaphor and simile. While I think writing of that nature works really well in short form--it becomes distracting in the novel. So many times I was pulled away from the story because I had to stop to make sense of a sentence or think, "well that's an odd way to describe [insert phenomenon]." Which brings me to the point that I think that Rae works with words beautifully--there is definitely no shortage of well spun words in this novel, but ultimately, for my tastes it was a bit superfluous in this setting. I will say that she captured the mood of the desert quite well and it was possibly my favorite part of the book.

Perhaps the almost poetic nature of the writing would have been less pronounced if there was a little more depth to the characters. The "flashbacks" concerning the protagonist and his twin were really strong, but then the rest of the characters had no backstory or indicator of why they did what they did. I can see this being a deliberate choice to go with the overall 'theme' of the novel, but personally I like characters with rich backstory that I can ponder and consider how it changes their actions.

The last few chapters of this book were the most enjoyable, but getting there felt like meandering through a series of happenings instead of a cohesive story. I struggled between rating 2-3 stars depending on which aspect of the story I considered. While Rae's talent is obvious, and I think in this case the story and this reader are just mismatched. I'm very interested to see what others have to say, and hope you'll give it a read!

[kath · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was so lucky to have the chance to read this one early (thanks so much for sending me a copy, Rae!) and let me tell you, it reached out of the pages and grabbed my undying attention from the very first scene and I could hardly look away from then on. Somehow Rae has woven a gritty, desperate chase of a story through with a surprisingly thoughtful outlook on the push/pull of human violence and guilt along with achingly beautiful and evocative writing.

So listen up: Rae DelBianco is a strong new voice in the book community right out of the gate and you won’t want to miss this perfect summer read!

[Alisa Ellie · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The only way to influence another’s fate is by destroying them. It’s the only thing that can be done permanently and by an action within your control. To try to protect someone is to try to intervene in the actions of the world against them but that’s something you can’t face alone or entirely because if fate has bullets for them you can only take one.”

Rough Animals is precisely an excellent example of how a powerful new voice shapes the formidable novel. The story is written so ably that I’d never thought it’s a debut novel. The beauty of narration is murderous. It’s a deadly weapon in Rae’s arms, and she gladly carries the bloodshed not only on the pages of her novel but makes the reader bleeding with her narrative style in such an elegant and neat way. A couple of comparisons almost killed me with their beauty. It's the book I envy I didn't write by myself. I’m not so gifted tho.

I feel Rae’s love for classics through the pages of Rough Animals. I know she’s been compared to Denis Johnson and Cormac McCarthy and it’s a well-deserved statement. Moreover, she managed to create the spirit of romanticism for the rural life throughout the story full of violence, death, revenge, battles, and guns.

The story is hard to put down. In spite of the blood and murder flows with an endless stream, Rae spares a room for a vital message which is adroitly tangled into the wise plot and is revealed only at the very end that makes the jaw drop. It's the book that will never be forgotten after once read. Profoundly embedded in my reader’s mind, Rough Animals possesses the ability to surprise, causes the potent dependence and evokes the desire to be read once more. I have a premonition that it’ll be one of the most-talked-about books this year.

With Rough Animals, Rae proved herself as the author whose books I definitely will collect in my library. Highly recommended and mark my word, you’ll hear not once about this work of the imagination and twisted mind.

Rae provided me with the ARC of Rough Animals, but it’s in no way manipulated my opinion. I’m honest in my statements.

[A T · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wyatt Smith and his twin sister, Lucy, have lived in isolation, barely getting by on a lonesome ranch in Box Elder County, Utah since the accidental death of their father. One morning, Wyatt is shot in the arm, surprised by rapid gunfire that also claims four of his precious cattle. A feral, mud caked, and fiery young girl with an exceptional aim is guilty for the loss of his livestock, and the potential loss of the ranch. The meager ranch is the only home they siblings have ever known or wished to know, and they hold the girl captive, demanding restitution. She breaks loose overnight and Wyatt follows her to the unforgiving desert where heat, guns and cruelty are king. The unnamed girl, mysterious and deadly, leads him to a gritty criminal underworld. What follows is an odyssey through a sun-soaked, bloody nightmare, where Wyatt has no choice but to confront himself and his thoughts under the open hot sky of the desert. Rife with shootouts, hauntingly beautiful descriptions of the uncultivated wilds of Utah, Rough Animals reads like McCarthy’s best work with a dash of Tarantino’s cinematic mythology.

I LOVED this book and think it's the ideal modern western. BRAVO Rae!

Rae sent me a copy of this to review, and these are all my own honest opinions.

[Lynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a true work of art in that art is supposed to make you feel uncomfortable, to push you out of your comfort zone. This story was so well written that I felt like showering after sitting down to read. It's about twins who live alone and are about to lose their property when someone comes along and makes them that much closer to the loss. If you like gritty, dark, rustic stories, this one is for you! Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

[Cátia Vieira · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why should you read this book?
Rough Animals by Rae DelBianco was considered one of The 25 Best Thriller Books of the Summer by the New York Post. This is one of those books that takes a while to process. I have mixed feelings about it but it’s an unusual book. And that is good. That is great!

This book has been described as a rural thriller perfect for Breaking Bad fans! Rough Animals tells the story of Wyatt and his twin sister, Lucy. After being shot and seeing his cattle get killed by a girl, Wyatt decides to hold the shooter captive in his ranch. But the girl disappears over night. Wyatt decides to embark on an odyssey, searching for her, where he’ll discover himself.

Why did I like this book? Although this raw, dry and harsh rural world is not my favorite setting, DelBianco made me feel like I was there. She built a consistent and visceral violent world. I also loved that the author didn’t portray the twin’s relationship in a traditional way. They have a very unique (sometimes it seems even incestuous) bond. Lastly, I really enjoyed how life and death – Eros and Thanatos – are everywhere!

What didn’t I like? Somehow I could never feel connected to this plot and to the characters. I realized it was because of the writing. DelBianco has a very particular style and I think it didn’t work for me. She uses lots of pleonasms and her writing is too experimental which makes it hard to follow.

In spite of this, I think DelBianco is a very talented and promising writer, and she definitely built here a singular universe ruled by violence. There were some fantastic quotes too.

I’d like to thank SkyHorse Publishing for the free copy. For more reviews, follow me on Instagram: @booksturnyouon

[Ralph Badders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rae DelBianco has gifted us with a magnificent novel, a gripping plot, and written in a style that is impossible to put down. I found Rae Delbianco's epic novel to combine the descriptive majesty of Louis L'Amour with the Cormac McCarthy mastery of a story but in a language all her own . Witness a storyline that keeps the pages turning in this extraordinary and realistic presentation. An unwavering excellence is the hallmark of this novel!

[Andy Weston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Promotions I read of this book said it took inspiration from Cormac McCarthy and Denis Johnson. That lured me, but I should have looked for more. Far more than the action and the story it’s the writing that makes those books so great, and this really doesn’t have it. It all feels like it’s a bit forced, a poor imitation.

[Fede La Lettrice · Rating 2 out of 5]

No, ma proprio no e anche no.
Confuso, semplicistico, prevedibile e scritto in modo elementare.
McCarthy dove l'avete visto?

[Paolo Latini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best 2018 novel so far. A post-western odissey in a Malebrancheian theodicy.

“Rough Animals” are coarse animals, precarious, imperfect. And the world of RA is a rough, precarious and imperfect world populated by rough, precarious and imperfect people.
It looks like a world consistently drawn on the tropics and meridians of the Cartesian Theodicy. Actually Rae DelBianco drawn his world from others meridians, the “Blood Meridian” of McCarthy’s ouvre and brought into that world a bunch of nietzschean characters, but her world is consistent with the discussions on evil in the Cartesian Era.
Descartes took the agostinian and tomistic solution to the problem of Evil: Deus et natura faciunt nihil frusta, so every thing that has been created is “valde bona” for the fact itself to have been created. The moral evil (the evil done by men) was a negation, a non-perfection which resided in the finitude of the human intellectus, whence born the error, whence born the evil, that is always a “malum poenae.” Natural and Metaphysical evil (the evil done by Nature over men) was a statistical data born from the law of natures, and was in itself so small to be negligible.
That will lead Spinoza to think that evil and good are “only modes of thinking” devoid of objectivity, while Malebranche will go on the opposite direction, maybe following Burnett’s “Telluris Theoria Sacra”, and will see the evil in nature as something real, positive: “Everything enters into the order of Providence, even disorder. But disorder always remains what it is. God permits it,” and so those disorders, such as deserts, drought, illness, other monstrosities, “are the necessary consequences of Natural Laws.”
Rae DelBianco seems to speak Malebranche language, when for example a character says that “in the wilderness there’s no such thing as right”: there’s no right and no wrong, there are only the thing as they are. There is the desert, which is absence of life, presence of death, “spread upon the map from below like a callus on the earth,” where the only form of life is a “greenhouse sat as a leafcolored prism in a wash of ground without color. Like a pocket or a casing, filled with the only thing left alive in the desert,” so that one keep wondering “if the sense of it was something you could survive off of.”
The world depicted by Rae DelBianco is a world where the evil is present everywhere. The difference with Malebranche is that in her world “There is no God and we are his prophets” (to say it with McCarthy), so the characters living in it are bound to find their own solution to the problem of evil, and all of their lives are but “a series of unremarkable struggles against nature with neither triumph nor end” and with no God, no Hope, no nothing, you have to act “under the influence of desperation and fear.”
In this world a 23-year-old Wyatt Smith, motherless and fatherless, live with his twin sister on Box Elder, Utah. He tries to adapt himself to a violently indifferent world—he has a glass eye, he feels a guilt for a sin he has not committed (a kind of original sin), he feels responsible for his sister. One day discovers that their livestock (their only form of sustenance) has been attacked and some cows have been killed and eaten raw. He finds out that the attacker was a 14-year-old girl, a tough bad-ass girl who wanders the world with a shotgun in one arm and a Tec-9 in the other. So begins an odyssey that leads Wyatt in search of the fleeing girl. He finds her and ventures along with her in the Utah deserts, through drug Cartels and hungry coyotes. Wyatt is the doubt: he doesn’t know whether the girl is Good or Evil, and apparently he can’t decide whether she is a friend or an enemy. He follows her, interrogates her, he tries to understand what she’s had to understand by herself in a series of dialogues that, although somewhat didascalic here and then, have often the quality of philosophical chitchat on life, violence, time, fate and death.
If Wyatt represent the Cartesian Doubt, the suspension of every judgment, the girl is a nietzschean heroine beyond the evil and the bad, in some way reminiscent of Judge Holden, but a Judge without the knowledge of experience. She has an istinct and a lot of answers, but maybe you won’t want to listen to them.

[Lindsey Robison (theinfernalqueen)]

Okay, how am I just seeing this? I LIVE IN UTAH PEOPLE. This is going to be amazing!

[Chloe (thelastcolour) · Rating 5 out of 5]

"They knew things were different in Box Elder, even though it was the only place they had ever been. It was a place with something wrong about it, you could sense it, and they didn't suspect that all the world was wrong like that because they knew somehow that this place was different, was something else."

Rough Animals was one of my most anticipated books of the year. As soon as I discovered that Rae was publishing a book I knew that I had to read it, that if it was anything like her photographic skills then her book would blow me away. And it did. This gritty and dark western-esque novel is not something I would usually read, I would shy away from anything that was coated in bloodshed, anything with slaughter and a thirst to survive that was so powerful you would do anything to prevent death. But, after reading this, maybe I do need to venture outside of my comfort zone a little more often.

Despite the dark tone of the story, I feel deeply in love with Rae’s writing, it had that romantic feel that even the trials of rural life seemed wistful but it took nothing away from the plot at all. She didn’t romanticise death or murder or grief. The characters that she brought to life were so vivid that I could feel them hovering around me, I could look for them in the deserts, in the corners of the world where human life is scarce, where only the strong-willed could survive.
Rae is one talented young author and I cannot wait to see what she will write next. I will read anything written by her and I urge you to do the same. Give this book a chance, I am a huge lover of fantasy but this book stole my heart and I have a feeling it could do the same for you.

Here is a little bit of what you can expect from delving into the story of Wyatt and Lucy, two twins running a ranch alone, holding on by the skin of their teeth.
Rough Animals is a story of survival. It’s blood crusted to skin, dripping down chins, spattering on sand. It’s dirt caked beneath fingernails, etching marks into rocks to prove you were here, alive, breathing. It’s coyotes howling, circling you hungry and desperate. There’s gunshots ringing in your ears, hearts thumping against rib cages, eyes squinting in the blistering sun. It’s the black eyes of cattle in the dead of night, white dresses in the moonlight, hands gripping each other and never letting go. There’s a beaten down house with flecked paint and windows that cast huge shadows for old memories to thrive. This story is savage and haunting, raw and gritty. It is the act of doing things no other human could do, protecting souls because yours is already damaged. This is a story of a bond so strong that not even fate can shatter it.

I will say one more thing and that is that the final page of this book, the final paragraph left me speechless. This story will haunt me as The Secret History haunts me, as the Goldfinch does. Rae’s words will live in me as Donna Tartt’s does. Wyatt and Lucy have found a piece of my heart to thrive in, alongside Henry and Francis, Theo and Boris. I am not comparing Rae to Donna, Rae has a voice powerful enough in this literary world to stand on her own two feet.

[Cristina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rough Animals (2018) by Rae DelBianco

In her poetic-voiced Modern novel Nightwood, Djuna Barnes writes, “[s]ometimes one meets a woman who is a beast turning human.” It is this quotation that kept hovering in my mind as I read Rae DelBianco’s Rough Animals (2018, Arcade Publishing). A captivating novel, it is about twins Wyatt and Lucy Smith, orphaned and alone on a Box Elder County ranch; a mysterious young fiend who shatters their (abnormal) normality; the devastating effects of Nature; drug cartels; and the unstable, lingering presence of the Smiths’ dead father. A very physical, visceral novel, Rough Animals is also as much about self-investigation and personal odysseys, these reflective moments told through occasional flashbacks or memories.

Rough Animals is a nearly ineffable debut. It blends acute poetic observations with the viciousness of the rawest contemporary language of violence and desperation. Set in Utah, in a merciless county of cattle and cartel alike, ugliness haunts these places; beauty does, too. Sometimes, the “places” are within people. The novel offers a haunted world that feels out of time, a vestige of a lost America without TVs or smartphones. For an almost-quiet moment, we are transported to the Old West. But then Walmart and drug cartels emerge to catalyze the gritty plot, and we are reminded just how far we may or may not have gotten since our nation’s darker past—that we may not be out from under the shadow yet. That we may, at times, take it up like a mantle and drape ourselves around it, forcing ourselves to find comfort in our baseness.

Simultaneously dreamy and devastating, beautiful and terrifying, Rough Animals will cling to you long after you read it, like a bur on animal hide. And maybe you’ll realize that you are, at times, the animal. While I often steer away from comparisons with other authors, DelBianco’s style carries the musky scent of Charles Portis, Philipp Meyer, Cormac McCarthy, and Denis Johnson—with a soupçon of Joyce Carol Oates’ delicious look at the gruesome that oftentimes borders upon poetry. Indeed, DelBianco is unafraid of getting dark, ghastly, and bloody. The lines between man and animal blur and the most savage of figures is the aforementioned mysterious teenaged girl with the resolution and constitution of a cockroach.

When we meet Wyatt Smith, he is already maimed; his twin Lucy may not bear the physical scars (such as a missing eye) of her brother but, internally, she, too, is maimed and effected in a way that is oftentimes vaporous. The relationship between Wyatt and Lucy isn’t quite playful or ordinary or even incestuous. Instead, DelBianco creates her own form of fraternal / twin connection by placing between the two a tragedy (the untimely death of their father, a man who feels as easy to grasp as running an open hand through sand) that has settled in their restless, half-starved bodies.

In truth, what yokes them is violence—the constant exposure of it a necessity on a sometimes-ravaged, sometimes-ravaging land that yields too little to eat and too much to make one sleep easy.

Simultaneously, with a deft, twinning skill worthy of the twins at the center of Rough Animals, DelBianco romanticizes and de-romanticizes the West, America, the Dream. Although sometimes expected in moments, the ambiguity that permeates the characters’ relationships is what attracts. It’s a fascinating portrait of nature and nurture. It’s a celebration of the endurance of the human body, too, and some of the more riveting passages involve bullet holes, lost eyes, starved bodies, scalped men, foaming horses, and other nasty, fiendish stuff because I am forever in awe of just how much the mind and spirit can will one to keep going. Wyatt’s tenacity, in some part, seems channeled from his twin sister, even if she is miles and days away. The Girl’s indomitable spirit seems gifted to her from the relentless landscape—as if she eats it for breakfast. She probably does.

To continue, Rough Animals carries a natural cinematic quality, a forward-moving action that barely lets up once the first page ends. Yet, there are quiet moments that would be lost on film—the sounds of the woods, the grit of the sand in a wound, the taste of iron in a bloody mouth. It’s a feast for the senses that sometimes tastes foul—but that won’t stop you from reading on.

So often, we look for the character with whom to side, for whom too root. Wyatt Smith is certainly the central figure here, the story often pivoting around his perspective and memory. Yet Lucy Smith is an intoxicating, even fairy-like presence and she folds, at times, into the presence of the plucky young girl—a savage who, perhaps, is who and what Lucy could have become without an anchorhold of love and support in her life—an anchorhold like Wyatt.

These are not always good people, but they’re trying. They are human. Wyatt and Lucy have their sins—despite his handicap and her penchant for white dresses, there’s something not-so-vulnerable about these brazen twins of secrets that may outnumber those of Nature. And there is desperate love here—for life, for others, but mostly for a land. What is more human, after all, than love and vulnerability?

But the land! The land, which acts like a fourth central character, perhaps bound-up with the disintegrating presence of Wyatt and Lucy’s father—the land that keeps their secrets. Like Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter in which the narrator admits “[i]t is not love, but instinct” that drives him, unyieldingly, back to his haunted historical home of Salem, a “place of birth and burial” even when he strives to get away, Rough Animals feels instinctually protective of land, the driving force behind Wyatt’s main motives and actions (or so it appears). What do we owe our ancestors? What do we owe strangers? What do we owe ourselves? How do we even begin to break what Hawthorne calls “a kindred between the human being and the locality, quite independent of any charm in the scenery or moral circumstances that surround him”? Should we?

What do we owe the land that has, so selflessly, let us become who we are, beast or human, mad or divine?

In the end, though, and as intimated earlier, the real story is planted deep within the iconic landscape—the truths it holds, the indifference it offers the desperate, the secrets it hides and reveals. Descriptions of Nature are DelBianco’s strength. Her narrator is the voice of Nature, in some ways—embracing of the grotesque and the gorgeous alike, from trapped or trampled animals to the blooming red innards of a box elder maple (see also the novel’s cover). This tree is symbolic of human beings, of course, but unlike a tree, people do not show their real wounds if you cut them open. The truly debilitating, deathly wounds are internal, buried deep, sometimes not even observed by the wounded. I get the feeling that Wyatt and Lucy don’t even recognize the full extent of their problems or powers; but they are strong, vital beings. Their blood keeps pumping. Their bodies rally and endure. We may not know the total ending of their story but, I think, they’ll be fine.

At least, I like to think so.

[Kimberly Jacovich · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the opening sentence of Rough Animals by author Rae DelBianco, the language is captivating, bringing beauty to a primal landscape, a lost world. Before the dawning of day, Wyatt Smith’s life is turned on its head, though it is not the first time. A powerful rumination gives the reader an immediate and visceral connection to the main character, Wyatt Smith as well as to his twin sister, Lucy.

And so begins the sojourn after the late night slaughter of cattle, as Wyatt tracks the killer, a young girl who is more creature than human and curiously carries a bagful of numbered rocks. She leads Wyatt away from his twin sister and the homeland of his ancestors, from Northern Utah to the south, from the woodlands of Box Elder to the desert lands, encountering violent bikers and drug cartels along the way.

The odyssey is bloody, a constant battle of survival with Wyatt pitted against a primal beast, fighting for restitution or if nothing else retaliation. He becomes a killer and questions if he had always been since that fateful day as patricide becomes a running theme throughout the story. There is a feeling conjured of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. The young girl akin to the judge, knowing the turnings of all men, the darkness lurking, more demonic than holy. She is feared by men, seemingly to be immortal.

There is an odd softness metamorphing between Wyatt and the girl as they grope for survival, trekking the hellish landscape. Wyatt speaks of a strong will when she speaks of fate, another McCarthy similarity. Philosophical discourse abound from the girl, incongruous of her age and background.

The story is punctuated with flashes of life on the ranch with Wyatt, his sister and father. Motivation is clearly defined from Wyatt’s point of view, but Lucy’s drive is a bit vague. The story comes to life as the author finds her clear voice and the telling of the story begins, its heart song beating, finding beauty in the depth of carnage. Wyatt, staying true to his course, is given a far more hopeful, redemptive end than allowed McCarthy’s the kid.

[Chelsea Bartlett · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to love this novel because it sounded so cool and I heard such fabulously good things about it, but I just didn't love it. Some of that might be my unfamiliarity with the genre, but since I've considered that and ultimately stand by my reasons for not wanting to give this one three stars (mostly because I felt it would be a disservice to the other books that I have given three stars) I felt I should give the reasons that this one falls down to a two for me:

Emotionality: Despite being so deeply in Wyatt's head for many of his thoughts and anxieties, I felt I was constantly held at bay when it came to the emotions in the story. I was never allowed to get close to Wyatt in the ways that I wanted to. I was allowed to observe his love for his sister, but I wasn't ever allowed to experience it with him. I was allowed to observe his anger, but not feel it. I just felt like the writing never really let me into the emotion of the story. I had to watch it from a distance, and one of the best things about reading, in my opinion, is that you can really get into those things, so I was disappointed to be held at such a length.

Pacing: Typically when stories do hold me at bay emotionally, it's because they're simply stories that are more focused on plot than character -- which, while not my personal favorite, is certainly a valid way to tell a story. But Rough Animals has a tendency to linger in the in-between moments (without giving the reader access to the emotions unfolding in said moments) and then speed through the high-stakes, dramatic, plot-driving scenes. In most of the major moments of the novel, in which major events are taking place, huge actions unfolding, I felt that the writing breezed through them as quickly as possible. Often I was confused by what was happening simply because there wasn't enough detail given for me to be able to picture the scene. This happened even in the final climactic scene -- over so quickly and with so little attention that it wouldn't have felt like the climax at all if I hadn't been able to see how close I was to the end of the novel.

To be clear and honest, the plot is almost never the place in a book where I'm most engaged. But, that's usually because I care more about the characters themselves than I do about the story, and because this book never let me get as close to the characters as I wanted to, the plot needed to carry a lot more weight, and because the plot-heavy moments were brushed aside so quickly, it did not.

Prose: I could have dealt with all of the above and been happy enough with the book to give it at least a three-star rating if the prose had lived up to what I'd heard about it. Sometimes the part of a book I fall most in love with is the writing itself, and I'm totally fine with that. But while it's true that Rough Animals had some interesting word and phrase choices throughout -- some of which were vivid and visceral -- overall, I couldn't find myself praising the prose like I had hoped. Unfortunately, I again found myself mostly confused. The sentences are often so experimental as to be nearly impossible to follow, and while sometimes that was used to a particular effect (for example, letting the reader experience Wyatt's anxiety through his streaming thoughts, as I mentioned above) usually these sentences playing with the form seemed to exist purely to be different. I'm a firm believer that the rules are the rules for a reason, and that while it's certainly valid to break those rules, that too should have a reason.

In Rough Animals, the strange and complicated sentences structures seemed to exist, more often than not, just to be strange and complicated, rather than to achieve any aim. On top of this, they were sometimes stacked on top of each other so that entire passages were nearly impossible to understand. I expect this would have worked better if I'd been listening to someone else read the book, but I don't believe an audiobook had been released yet when I looked for one (which I did, for exactly this reason).

As I mentioned, this is outside of my typical genres, and it's possible that everything I just listed is completely in keeping with the genre Rough Animals occupies. However, I decided to stick with my two-star rating despite this, because whether it's typical for the genre or not, for me if the book doesn't hold up in any of the three major characteristics of a novel -- character, plot, and prose -- then it just can't be lumped together with lots of other novels that do, even if they weren't my favorites.

All that said, I didn't hate Rough Animals. I did adjust to the prose style and found it easier to follow as I went on (though still unnecessarily difficult). Eventually I found myself invested in Wyatt as I came to feel for him through his increasing hardships, even though I never felt very close to him emotionally and I found myself questioning his motives more and more as the story progressed. His relationship with his twin sister Lucy, and eventually with "the girl," were the two most interesting parts of the story for me (though ultimately, it was both of these that left me feeling dissatisfied with the ending). I didn't hate it. I was torn between giving it two or three stars up until the very end, but once I finished it, I knew that the ending did not do enough to salvage the rest of it for me, and I would have felt bad for my three-star books if I had included this among them.

[AMenagerieofWords Deb Coco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you Net Galley for the preview of this upcoming novel. Rae DelBianco understands the power of words; I believe this young author will be a force. I don't normally stay up all night to finish a book, but I could not put Rough Animals down. There are comparisons being made to Cormac McCarthy; I'd say they are spot on. I also see parallels with Larry McMurtry, Steinbeck and Faulkner. For me, the story of Wyatt and Lucy evoked memories of George Eliot's Maggie & Tom Tulliver because of the unique and tender relationship between twins. The amazing development of the character we know only as "The girl" reminds me of Stieg Larsson's Lisbeth Salander -- she is that tough. The quality of the prose is remarkable . . .the narrative is full of organic descriptions of unique characters and their brutal struggle for survival in unforgiving western landscapes. DelBianco is masterful at building atmosphere; we taste, feel and smell the world of Box Elder. Rough Animals is raw -- this is not a warm and fuzzy read. And yet, the reader is given some resolve in the end. DelBianco wove an epic tale around a resilient and uncommon cast. What I found so compelling is that amidst the guns and drugs and death, there were loving moments of tenderness -- quite a tall order. Highly recommend.

[Matteo Mazzoli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Potente romanzo d'esordio di una giovane scrittrice che potrebbe essere davvero un talento da tener d'occhio. Mi ha colpito la capacità di raccontare con immagine fervide luoghi e corpi e azioni di un romanzo che a volte richiama troppo autori già letti e consumati, ma che nel complesso coinvolge senza eccessive pause. Unica nota "stonata", una scrittura certamente di livello ma che a tratti si avvolge troppo su se stessa, non riuscendo a comunicare appieno il pathos di alcuni momenti del romanzo. Detto ciò, una lettura godibilissima e a tratti davvero potente