American Delirium

Book excerpt: From award-winning novelist Betina González, a dizzying, luminous English-language debut about an American town overrun by a mysterious hallucinogen and the collision of three unexpected characters' lives through the mayhem First, in a small Midwestern city, the deer population starts attacking people. So Beryl, a feisty senior with a troubled past, decides to take matters into her own hands, training a squad of fellow retirees to hunt the animals down and reclaim their own vitality. At the same time, a group of protesters decides to abandon the “system” and live in the woods, leaving their children and all responsibility behind. Berenice never thought her mother would join the “dropouts,” but she’s been gone for several days, and the only clue to what might have happened to her is hidden somewhere in her old scrapbook. Vik, a taxidermist at the natural history museum and an immigrant from the Caribbean, is beginning to see the connections between the dropouts, the deer, and the discord. But he’s not about to act on his suspicions—he knows he would somehow be the one to go to jail. Each of these heartfelt and engrossing characters struggles to see their place in a society full of contradictions, but they ultimately rescue one another in surprising ways.