A hair-raising, head-banging, meet-the-Devil epic tale of love, youth, and rock n roll.Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prizewinning author ofLess Is Lost
Kip, Leslie, and Kira are outlierseven in the metal scene they love. In arch-conservative Gulf Coast Florida in the late 1980s, just listening to metal can get you arrested, but for the three of them the risk is well worth it, because metal is what leads them to one another.
Different as they are, Kip, Leslie, and Kira form a family of sorts that proves far safer, and more loving, than the families they come from. Together, they make the pilgrimage from Florida's swamp country to the fabled Sunset Strip in Hollywood. But in time, the delicate equilibrium they've found begins to crumble. Leslie moves home to live with his elderly parents; Kip struggles to find his footing in the sordid world of LA music journalism; and Kira, the most troubled of the three, finds herself drawn to ever darker and more extreme strains of metal. On a trip to northern Europe for her twenty-second birthday, in the middle of a show, she simply vanishes. Two years later, the truth about her disappearance reunites Kip with Leslie, who in order to bring Kira home alive must make greater sacrifices than they could ever have imagined.
In his most absorbing and ambitious novel yet, John Wray dives deep into the wild, funhouse world of heavy metal and death cults in the 1980s and '90s.Gone to the Wolveslays bare the intensity, tumult, and thrill of friendship in adolescencea time when music can often feel like life or death.
John Wrayis the author of six critically acclaimed novels, including
Godsend,
The Lost Time Accidents, and
Lowboy. The recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, a Guggenheim grant, and a Cullman Fellowship from the New York Public Library, he was named one of
Granta's Best of Young American Novelists in 2007. He lives in New York Citl#’