Hear Him Roar introduces a gifted and terribly smart new writer from the West. If Andrew Wingfield keeps making novels this good we've got a worthy successor to Wallace Stegner and a good nephew of Edward Abbey, Joan Didion, and James Houston.
-Alan Cheuse, Book Commentator, National Public Radio's All Things Considered
I much admire what Andrew Wingfield has achieved in this fine first novel, the engaging voice, the mature vision. Charlie Sayers seems to have no answer to the riddle of his life-until the mystery of wild creatures touches him profoundly and guides him toward a new beginning. This is a story told with both art and wisdom.
-James D. Houston, author of Snow Mountain Passage
A convincing voice, convincingly thrown: young Andrew Wingfield makes the aging Charlie Sayers "roar". This tale of death and regeneration compels our breath-held attention from first to final page.
-Nicholas Delbanco, author of The Vagabonds
The roar you hear in Andrew Wingfield's first novel, Hear Him Roar, is not the cougar on the front cover. The roar comes from the aging curmudgeon Charlie Sayers giving birth to his soul. His roar is precisely what Walt Whitman described in "Leaves of Grass": I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world.
-Judyth A. Willis, Terrain
Andrew Wingfield's debut novel uses a contemporary example of wild-urban interface to probe the failure and redemption of a sixty-two-year-old man, Charlie Sayers. Wingfield leads us to Sayers' nadir and beyond as we consider the fate of mountain lions stalking nouveau suburbs and the inevitable political and media fallout. I enjoyed Wingfield's humor, gentle satire, and steady compassion.
-O. Alan Weltzien, editor of The Literaty Art and Activism of Rick Bass
and coeditor of Coming into McPhee Country
Andrew Wingfield's Hear Him Roar is a pure distillation of the messy intersection of wilderness and domesticity, male and female needs, youth and aging, as each enroaches on the other. Provocative and funny, the novel meditates on the importance of finding an inner spiritual geography in tune with a changing natural world.
-Hal Crimmel, editor of Teaching in the Field:
Working with Students in the Outdoor Classroom
Cover Photo by Mark Parchman
© Copyright 2008 - Andrew Wingfield - All Rights Reserved