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Kelsey Ford: From the Stacks: J. M. Ledgard's Submergence (0 comment)
Our blog feature, "From the Stacks," features our booksellers’ favorite older books: those fortuitous used finds, underrated masterpieces, and lesser known treasures. Basically: the books that we’re the most passionate about handselling. This week, we’re featuring Kelsey F.’s pick, Submergence by J. M. Ledgard...
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  • Kelsey Ford: Powell's Picks Spotlight: Grady Hendrix's 'How to Sell a Haunted House' (0 comment)

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The Dog Stars

by Peter Heller
The Dog Stars

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  • Synopses & Reviews

ISBN13: 9780307950475
ISBN10: 0307950476
Condition: Standard


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Staff Pick

A post-apocalyptic story with an open, elegant heart, Heller's debut novel follows a pilot, Hig, and an ex-military man, Bangley, in their fight for survival. Although stuck together in an uneasy partnership, they each flawlessly compensate for the deficits in the other and guard their "home" — an abandoned airport — from marauding intruders. Even as danger lurks around every corner and death is present in every exchange, the two work together as a well-oiled machine.

Yet, nine years on, Hig is lost and yearning for something he can't quite name. Leaving Bangley on his own, Hig takes off in his little Cessna and flies beyond the point of no return, holding onto the only thing he can — hope. The Dog Stars is an achingly beautiful book with characters that are wholly human. It's a dazzling story full of loss, pain, and sorrow, but also truth. And every page is absolutely humming with brilliance. Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

A riveting, powerful novel about a pilot living in a world filled with loss — and what he is willing to risk to rediscover, against all odds, connection, love, and grace.

Hig survived the flu that killed everyone he knows. His wife is gone, his friends are dead, he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, his only neighbor a gun-toting misanthrope. In his 1956 Cessna, Hig flies the perimeter of the airfield or sneaks off to the mountains to fish and to pretend that things are the way they used to be. But when a random transmission somehow beams through his radio, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life — something like his old life — exists beyond the airport. Risking everything, he flies past his point of no return — not enough fuel to get him home — following the trail of the static-broken voice on the radio. But what he encounters and what he must face — in the people he meets, and in himself — is both better and worse than anything he could have hoped for.

Narrated by a man who is part warrior and part dreamer, a hunter with a great shot and a heart that refuses to harden, The Dog Stars is both savagely funny and achingly sad, a breathtaking story about what it means to be human.

Review

“Extraordinary....One of those books that makes you happy for literature.” Junot Díaz, The Wall Street Journal

Review

“This end-of-the-world novel [is] more like a rapturous beginning....Remarkable.” San Francisco Chronicle

Review

“Heart-wrenching and richly written....The Dog Stars is a love story, but not just in the typical sense. It’s an ode to friendship between two men, a story of the strong bond between a human and a dog, and a reminder of what is worth living for.” Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Review

“A brilliant success.” The New Yorker

Review

“Beautifully written and morally challenging” The Atlantic Monthly

Review

"Dark, poetic, and funny." Jennifer Reese, NPR

Review

“An elegy for a lost world turns suddenly into a paean to new possibilities. In The Dog Stars, Peter Heller serves up an insightful account of physical, mental, and spiritual survival unfolded in dramatic and often lyrical prose.” The Boston Globe

Review

“With its evocative descriptions of hunting, fishing, and flying, [The Dog Stars], perhaps the world’s most poetic survival guide, reads as if Billy Collins had novelized one of George Romero’s zombie flicks.” Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

Review

“The Dog Stars can feel less like a 21st-century apocalypse and more like a 19th-century frontier narrative (albeit one in which many, many species have become extinct). There are echoes of Grizzly Adams or Jeremiah Johnson in scenes where Heller lingers on the details of how the water in a flowing stream changes color as the sun moves across the sky.” The Dallas Morning News

Review

“Heller’s surprising and irresistible blend of suspense, romance, social insight, and humor creates a cunning form of cognitive dissonance neatly pegged by Hig as an ‘apocalyptic parody of Norman Rockwell’ — a novel, that is, of spiky pleasure and signal resonance.” Booklist (Starred Review)

Review

“Terrific....With echoes of Moby Dick, The Dog Stars...brings Melville’s broad, contemplative exploration of good and evil to his story.” Shelf Awareness

Review

“A post-apocalyptic adventure novel with the soul of haiku.” The Columbus Dispatch

About the Author

Peter Heller holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in both fiction and poetry. An award-winning adventure writer and longtime contributor to NPR, Heller is a contributing editor at Outside magazine, Men’s Journal, and National Geographic Adventure, and a regular contributor to Bloomberg Businessweek. He is also the author of several nonfiction books, including Kook, The Whale Warriors, and Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet’s Tsangpo River. He lives in Denver, Colorado.

4.8 4

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating 4.8 (4 comments)

`
Coni , May 15, 2017 (view all comments by Coni)
For a post-apocalyptic story, the protagonist, Hig, is pretty light-hearted for the dire situation he has found himself in. He does have a pretty sweet set-up with Bangley who has some kind of military training to keep their area they are living in the past nine years safe. Bangley doesn't trust anyone out in the world and assumes everyone is going to want to kill them so he wants to kill them first. Hig doesn't always agree with this, but knows that Bangley has kept him alive for years. When something happens that shakes up Hig's worldview, he decides that he wants to fly farther than he ever has before to possibly see what is left of the world. I did enjoy the relationships in the story, but it did feel like there was a lot of set-up before the main plot got going. The first half of the book felt like set-up and I felt like the last half was almost rushed. I also have problems with the lack of quotes. I had a hard time figuring out who was talking or if it was Hig thinking to himself. It made me reread parts trying to figure it out. I would have read it faster with quotes.

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W S Krauss , February 04, 2015 (view all comments by W S Krauss)
It's the end of the world as we know it and Hig has found a place for himself at an airport in the middle of nowhere, Colorado. He and his unlikely friend, an old man named Bangley, live at the airport and protect each other from people who stumble upon them and mean to cause them harm. Bangley has lots of firepower and Hig has his dog, Jasper, and a Cessna. Hig patrols the surrounding countryside with the plane to watch for intruders. I don't want to give any of the plot away but things happen to change the lives of these two survivors. It's a beautiful, hopeful story and I loved the stream of consciousness style of writing.

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Diana9009 , May 24, 2013 (view all comments by Diana9009)
This book is incredible in so many ways. A rare gem that will make your heart pound like a thriller and make your hair stand on end from the prose. Also rare in the fact that it's written in present tense, yet flows effortlessly. Though I'm a fan of the present tense it has a number of limitations, one of which being that it feels unfamiliar, since most people are used to reading in the past tense. But I hardly noticed it wasn't in past tense. I got about fifty pages in before I realized. That's how perfect and necessary it is. And actually, this book made me rethink the way I write in first person. Hig's narration is fractured, often in incomplete sentences. And of course it is. That's how people really talk, even to themselves. Especially to themselves, especially in a world as lonely as this. And the way he left certain things unsaid. Genius, really. Said out loud they're cliches; unsaid, they're landmines, his emotional revelations. Really it's what the narrator doesn't say that's important. The blank spaces we, the readers, fill in with our own universal experience. Utterly brilliant.

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Julie Asregadoo , April 10, 2013
I absolutely loved this book. Heller's writing is lyrical, and shows the heart of a poet. I got this book from the library, but when it comes out in paperback, I'll be buying a copy for sure. High praise considering the small amount of space on my bookshelves.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780307950475
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
05/07/2013
Publisher:
Vintage Books
Series info:
Vintage Contemporaries
Pages:
319
Height:
.90IN
Width:
5.40IN
Thickness:
.75
Author:
Peter Heller
Subject:
Literature-A to Z
Subject:
Popular Fiction - Adventure

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List Price:$17.00
Used Trade Paperback
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