When he trespasses into a mysterious and ominous world called the Wildlife, a barrier-beach island designated as a national refuge, Peter is drawn to penetrate its interior. It is here that he meets the darkly sensual Vera, a vulnerable and dangerous woman whom he befriends and determines to rescue.

Peter's journey invites the reader down through the unsettled layers of human psyche and societal fear. All appears illusory, and yet all is real. In his vivid Drake Island setting, where human passions and forces of nature are animal in intensity, Masner takes the reader on a compulsively absorbing journey. 

Provocative fiction . . . not for the timid. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Kenneth Masner, a former New York book editor and psychologist, lives on the New England coast with his wife and a small managerie. He writes full time. 

EXCERPT

     "You beat a horse to death, Peter."
     The river road bordering the fringe of salt marsh offered faraway views of his house. From the torn back seat of the taxi he saw that the russet grasses and purple seed heads of late August had become the blanched straw of October. His car was a glint of light in the distant driveway. Madeline's car was not there.
     The silent cab driver who had picked him up at the hospital, though older and shorter than he, lifted his suitcase from the trunk and started across the overgrown lawn toward the front door of the house.
     "I can take my own suitcase." Peter yanked it away.
     The driver examined his hand. "No need to get rough about it." He demanded his fare and moved back to his taxi.
     Peter surveyed the tall grasses, uncut since spring, ranging down to the marsh and back to the woods. He couldn't understand why he had bothered maintaining a lawn. It must have been for Madeline. She romanticized but feared wild things. The taxi backed out of the driveway and drove away. Peter glanced at the woodpile, covered by an oiled tarp, and saw a pair of close-set eyes.
     "What?" Peter stared and they disappeared under the gray tarp. Dropping his suitcase he went to the woodpile and threw back the corner of the heavy canvas. Nothing. He left the tarp folded back and walked with his bag toward the house. It was chilly out. He glanced back repeatedly at the woodpile. Perhaps he would lay a fire later.
     He was accustomed to Madeline's absences but not to returning to an empty house. The house was cold. He went to the thermostat and saw that the heat hadn't been turned on for the season. He turned it up and heard the oil burner kick. Madeline was thoughtless as ever. One hard frost and the pipes would have frozen. He entered the utility room and checked the water pump to the well. She'd left it on, risking a burnout had a leak developed, not to mention the flood it would have caused after the frozen pipes burst. The pressure meter indicated the system was sound.
     "You beat a horse to death, Peter," Madeline had said. She'd come to see him in his hospital cell, sitting in the wooden straight chair. Otherwise the room was empty of furniture, the small high window and the thick glass in the door reinforced with chicken wire.
     "Shut up!" Peter pressed his palms to his ears.
     In the living room two paintings were missing from the walls. He climbed the stairs and stood in the hall. The yellowed wood floor was pale where for years there had been a hand-woven throw rug. Another painting was gone. Had burglars broken into the house? Didn't she care? In their bedroom another rug was missing and a wall hanging.
They'd stood beneath the high window, the horse Alice, mottled gray ghost, the ranger's dog Luke and the red squirrel.
     "She's not telling everything."
     Alice snorted and kicked at the linoleum, and the other two whined and chattered between themselves before falling silent again.
     Madeline's bureau was gone from the bedroom. He barged into her closet and found bare hangers, a heap of nylons on the floor. He picked them up, dust spilling off them, and threw them back down.
     It wasn't just the horse he was calling a liar. His wife had betrayed him and driven him crazy by her duplicity. Then Alice, the traitor, sat in judgment on him after his heroic attempt to save her.
     Madeline's things were missing from the bathroom. He heard a noise downstairs, doubtless her coming to tell him what she'd made clear already. He'd order her out. He stood at the top of the stairs, puzzled by the muted sounds of a struggle. Moving down the staircase, he followed an intermittent banging to the living room. Something was trapped in the wood stove. He sat on the couch and listened to be sure.
     The squirrel chattered shrilly in the dog's ear and the horse stretched her neck down to listen. Peter heard what the red one was saying: "He killed her with his bare fists. I was there, I saw it all."
     "That's not the way it happened."
     The squirrel fell into beady-eyed silence and the horse straightened, looking around the room as if bored. The big dog tensed and watched Peter menacingly, its white whiskers twitching.
     Madeline, fragilely self-assured in the wooden chair, parroted, "You beat a horse to death, Peter." Though pretty and petite, something about her was always off. Her blue eyes were too opaque, like lapis lazuli instead of flesh. She was a beautiful picture printed out of register. He'd tried to set her right, tactfully offering her the benefits of his years, but he had failed.
     "I didn't beat her to death. I tried to save her when she fell in the heat. You have no idea how hot it was."
     "She had a broken leg and two broken ribs. You push too hard. You always pushed the boys and me. If you hadn't driven us all beyond endurance on that mountain, none of this would have happened." She started crying the crocodile tears she was so proud of.