When We Were Animals

When We Were Animals is a novel on the edge of horror and literary fiction.

A small, quiet Midwestern town, which is unremarkable save for one fact: when the teenagers reach a certain age, they run wild.

When Lumen Fowler looks back on her childhood, she wouldn't have guessed she would become a kind suburban wife, a devoted mother. In fact, she never thought she would escape her small and peculiar hometown. When We Were Animals is Lumen's confessional: as a well-behaved and over-achieving teenager, she fell beneath the sway of her community's darkest, strangest secret. For one year, beginning at puberty, every resident "breaches" during the full moon. On these nights, adolescents run wild, destroying everything in their path.

But Lumen resists. She promises her father she will never breach, she investigates the secrets behind the community's traditions, and finally unearths the stories buried in her family's past. As the mysteries mount, we realize we may not know Lumen - or Anne as she now calls herself - at all.

A gothic coming-of-age tale for modern times, When We Were Animals is a dark, provocative journey into the American heartland.