A daring new departure from the inspired creator of The Vampire Chronicles (“unrelentingly erotic... unforgettable” — The Washington Post), Lives of the Mayfair Witches (“Anne Rice will live on through the ages of literature” — San Francisco Chronicle), and the angels of The Songs of the Seraphim (“remarkable” — Associated Press). A whole new world — modern, sleek,
high-tech — and at its center, a story as old and compelling as history:
the making of a werewolf, reimagined and reinvented as only Anne Rice,
teller of mesmerizing tales, conjurer extraordinaire of other realms,
could create.
The time is the present.
The place,
the rugged coast of Northern California. A bluff high above the Pacific. A grand mansion full of beauty and tantalizing history set against a
towering redwood forest.
A young reporter on assignment from the San Francisco Observer... An older woman welcoming him into her magnificent family home that
he has been sent to write about and that she must sell with some urgency... A chance encounter between two unlikely people... An idyllic
night — shattered by horrific unimaginable violence, the young man
inexplicably attacked — bitten — by a beast he cannot see in the rural
darkness... A violent episode that sets in motion a terrifying yet
seductive transformation, as the young man, caught between ecstasy and
horror, between embracing who he is evolving into and fearing what he
will become, soon experiences the thrill of the wolf gift.
As
he resists the paradoxical pleasure and enthrallment of his wolfen
savagery and delights in the power and (surprising) capacity for good,
he is caught up in a strange and dangerous rescue and is desperately
hunted as “the Man Wolf” by authorities, the media, and scientists
(evidence of DNA threatens to reveal his dual existence)... As a new
and profound love enfolds him, questions emerge that propel him deeper
into his mysterious new world: questions of why and how he has been
given this gift; of its true nature and the curious but satisfying pull
towards goodness; of the profound realization that there may be others
like him who are watching — guardian creatures who have existed throughout time who possess ancient secrets and alchemical knowledge. And
throughout it all, the search for salvation for a soul tormented by a
new realm of temptations, and the fraught, exhilarating journey, still
to come, of being and becoming, fully, both wolf and man.
