You're an Animal

A kaleidoscopic novel about a quartet of misfits on the run that interrogates trauma, healing, love, and what it means to truly belong—from the acclaimed author of White Fur It’s springtime in Oklahoma and Ernie, an outcast in a group of outcasts, feels uneasy. The whole decrepit compound where Ernie and his fellow oddballs were crashing has been on edge ever since a teenager named Coral arrived, unceremoniously abandoned by her family one afternoon. Adding to the mystery, Coral doesn't say a word. Ever. When a drug lab explosion burns the compound to the ground, Ernie, Coral, and adrenaline-fueled biker couple Staci and Ray escape on a pair of motorcycles. Shaky with fear, the four strangers find a rundown house in rural Texas: a place to stay, they tell themselves, for now. Yet to their surprise, each takes steps towards new beginnings: planting seeds and slowly, uncertainly, over the course of months, forming a quirky but genuine family. At the heart of their new home is Coral, whose silence only amplifies her strange, undefinable power. But when the law bears down on them in the fire's terrible aftermath, the group must confront the consequences of such unlikely love--the sort found between lonely, eccentric people—and their haven becomes a suddenly dangerous place where yet again the only choice looks like metamorphosis. A gentle, cautiously hopeful ode to the other, You're an Animal is a startling story that brings tenderness and grace to those who are left out, to those who opt out, and to the animal in us all.