A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain

“Harun is heir apparent to Louise Erdrich and Harry Crews.... Readers will be swept away by this breathless, absorbing novel.” —Claire Vaye Watkins, The New York Times Book ReviewIn this mysterious and chilling novel, girls, mostly Native, are vanishing from the sides of a notorious highway in the isolated Pacific Northwest. Leo Kreutzer and his friends are barely touched by these disappearances—until a series of enigmatic strangers arrive in their remote mountain town, beguiling and bewitching them. It seems as if the devil himself has appeared among them.   The intoxicatingly lush debut novel by the acclaimed author of The King of Limbo, A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain is an unsettling portrait of life in a dead-end town, as seductive and beautifully written as the devil’s dark arts are wielded.WINNER OF THE 2015 PINCKLEY PRIZE FOR DEBUT CRIME NOVEL

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Teenage Leo and his friends live in an angry, desolate logging town in British Columbia surrounded by mountains and switchback roads where nearly anyone can just disappear. Burdened by missing parents, dead-end work, abuse, and abject poverty, they manage as well as they can, but desperation like theirs is easy to poke at, and when the devil gets in their heads—in many shapes, in many ways—a torrent of vicious mayhem is unleashed in the tinderbox forests one sweltering July. First, an enigmatic girl swishes into their group and plants dangerous thoughts of revenge; then a charismatic, card-wielding magician capitalizes on one girl’s quick eye and even quicker hands. Gradually, with a choking, sinister smoke slowly encroaching on their stoops and windowsills, Leo and his friends commit acts destructive, vengeful, and fueled by hatred, but at the same time full of arresting, awful beauty. And yet, as in the best stories about the devil, the darkness that wisps in sooty tendrils around them is not so easy to classify. In mesmerizing prose, debut novelist Harun spins a chilling tale shot through with both aching realism and age-old folktales, melding them together to capture a landscape lush with possibility and imagination and terrifying in its vast emptiness. --Sarah Hunter

About the Author

Adrianne Harun teaches at the Rainier Writing Workshops, an MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University, and is the author of the acclaimed short story collection The King of Limbo. She lives in Port Townsend, Washington.

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