Why read Small Animals Caught in Traps?

Book cover of Small Animals Caught in Traps

Book description

For readers of Kristin Hannah’s The Great Alone and David Vann’s Legend of a Suicide, C. B. Bernard’s debut novel shows a father and a daughter fighting toward hope through a traumatic past.

In the town of Disappointment, Oregon, washed-up boxer Lewis Yaw makes ends meet as a fishing guide.…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Small Animals Caught in Traps as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Diane Josefowicz

Author

This book is a big-hearted meditation on family, on the ties that bind—and sometimes constrict.

Bernard masterfully evokes the ambiguities of life in the small Oregon town of Disappointment, where Lewis Yaw is contending with some fierce private demons while raising an equally fierce daughter, Gray. When their family’s happiness is shattered by tragedy, both Lewis and Gray must reconceive their ideas of who they are and what, beyond generational pain, actually makes up a family.

Bernard’s lushly evocative prose brings their world into such sharp, sensual focus—I could practically taste the whisky in the coffee and smell the sap…

From Diane's 3 favorite reads in 2023.