Midnight Sun (Paperback)

From the Publisher:
With the publication of his acclaimed first novel If I Don’t Six, Elwood Reid established himself as a young writer with an uncommon gift for peering into the hearts of blue-collar men. Now, Midnight Sun, a literary thriller that follows two men on a mission deep in the Alaskan wilderness, confirms Reid’s status as one of the most talented young writers working today.

Jack is a journeyman in his late twenties who finds himself pink slipped at the end of summer. With a secure job waiting for him in Texas, Jack allows his best friend to talk him into accepting ten thousand dollars from a dying Fairbanks man to travel into the northern wilderness and rescue his daughter from a millennial cult. The journey quickly goes awry, and they stumble into the cult compound only to find themselves in grave physical danger. Here is a taut and gripping tale in the tradition of James Dickey’s Deliverance and Jim Harrison’s A Good Day to Die.Seeking a thrill and some easy money, itinerant construction workers Jack and Burke agree to help a man rescue his daughter from a bizarre millennial cult and venture deep into the dangerous wilderness of Alaska, where they find themselves unprepared for the dark isolation, harsh conditions, and life-and-death struggle they confront. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.Jack, the gritty narrator of this dark, gripping novel by Elwood Reid, is a journeyman carpenter in his late twenties whose travels have led him to Alaska. When his pink slip arrives at the end of summer, he allows himself to be talked into an unusual job. Along with his best friend, Burke, Jack accepts ten thousand dollars from a dying Fairbanks man to travel into the northern wilderness and rescue his daughter from a cult.

It doesn’t take long before their trip begins to go awry, and things only get worse once they reach the cult’s camp, where they are received with a hostility that quickly turns violent. Jack soon realizes that Burke knows more than he lets on about their mission and he finds himself on his own, desperately seeking a way out of the camp. Taut, riveting, and complex, Midnight Sun is an arctic Deliverance, a literary thriller set deep in beautiful but dark and indifferent Alaskan woods.