Pre-numbered label used for registration.

This is my free advanced reading copy, which arrived in the mail yesterday. I'm not sure if this is really my kind of book or not, but I'll give it a try.

From the back cover: In the summer of 1969, a disillusioned Berkeley graduate leaves behind a world of protests and riots to follow a wild, inner calling. Sam Altman is an intense young man whose unleashed and increasingly unhinged imagination takes him first to Seattle and then farther north, to the remote Alaskan wilderness.

Sam has fallen deeply in love with the mysterious and powerful Lindy, a young woman who understands his quest, and who will do anything to help him realize it--no matter how bizarre or dangerous. On the unforgiving ridges of Mt. Wrangell, alone with his reckless ideas and a driving need to uncover his innermost self, Sam, who has renamed himself Ransom, gradually transforms himself into a ram--prey to a pack of strangely familiar wolves.

The mad pursuit leads from the wilds to civilization and back again. And when Sam and Lindy return to brave the perilous mountain together, the truth behind his imagined transformation emerges. What they discover in those frozen heights threatens their love as well as their sanity and their lives.

Wild Animus is a search for the primordial, a test of human foundations, and a journey to the breaking point. This is a story of love and sacrifice, of obsession, of finding the limits of the heart and going one step farther.

This definitely was not the type of book I would normally pick up to read, and I doubt that I would have ever read if I hadn't gotten it free. This is a difficult book for me to describe. I'm not sure that I can say that I enjoyed it, as I found it quite disturbing. However, it was interesting, and I never felt like I was wasting my time reading it. The text could use a little more polishing by a good editor, and the passages describing Sam/Ransom's experiences or visions as the ram are difficult to comprehend (though they might be written that way on purpose, to convey some of the madness that they represent). Overall, this struck me as better than average for a new author.

This story seems to be about our struggle to define our existence, while at the same time exploring the meaning of sanity. I still am not sure if Sam/Ransom was insane, or if he is merely acting out his LSD-induced fantasies. There are hints of something meta-physical here, but nothing overt enough to actually pin down. The price Sam/Ransom pays to follow his passion is extreme, and his willingness to sacrifice everything was disturbing to me, especiallly since I can't be sure that it wasn't simply insanity driving him.

I was visiting D.C. with a music group from my school (San Jose, Ca). We went to Pentagon City mall, and as we were walking over to a table to eat, I saw this book. I have it in San Jose with me now and I plan on releasing it back when I'm done.

CAUGHT IN WASHINGTON, D.C. UNITED STATES