A brush with death leads a man to a new life and a new awareness of a beautiful, dangerous world hidden all around in Strange Animals, the first novel by poet Jarod K. Anderson (Something in the Woods Loves You).
Green twists his ankle and falls off the curb, then sees a bus coming toward him--then he's standing on the sidewalk again. Afterward, he feels called to the Catskills. During his first night at the campgrounds, he wakes before dawn to a translucent deer being chased by a horned, wolf-like creature that leaps onto the hood of his car and speaks to him telepathically. Green's neighbor, Valentina, tells him that that he is a cryptonaturalist, or someone "who studies hidden nature," and he accepts a position as her apprentice. There's been a series of possibly natural but unlikely deaths in the area, so understanding cryptids quickly becomes not only an academic matter but also vital to protecting the community Green is coming to love.
Anderson, creator of The CryptoNaturalist podcast, presents the vibrant, wonderous creatures that one would expect and depicts the quirks of humanity with equal love and attention. From the moment that Green asks the gas station attendants for directions to a campground, the residents of this little corner of the Catskills come across as a charming collection of misfits, ready to welcome the sort of person who feels called to them. The potentially world-altering threat of one of these cryptids is a bit too perilous to call Strange Animals a cozy fantasy, but it offers true heart and found family in a sometimes incomprehensible world. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library