Keepers

Status: Available

Page Count: 256

Edition: First

ISBN: 978-1-59092-127-2

SRP (USD): $15.99

Size: 5.5x8.5 trade paperback

Cover: Buster Blue

Genre(s): Fiction

Homepage: Stephen G. Chaffee

This is the account of a dog, Kikki, and his friend, the pig. Even though I never had the pleasure of making his acquaintance personally, Kikki, it seems, was an every-dog, and therefore quite an ordinary beast. And although the fact that he could tell a good tale was, I suspect, lost on the pig, that faculty would so stir the hearts of those around him that their minds' later telling would lend voice to something legendary...

Kikki became both jungle-dog and friend, and therefore quite extraordinary.

For we are all, in the end,

the keepers of our own destinies.

"If through some miracle of temporal displacement Jack London had gotten to collaborate with Aesop on a whimsical yet piquant epic set in the jungles of Gabon, the result might have read like The Hooded Cloak Chronicles. Anyone who has been moved by Richard Adams's Watership Down or Yann Martel's Life of Pi is certain to enjoy this deliriously lyrical and puissantly poetic fable."

--James Morrow, author of the Godhead Trilogy

"Although a trilogy with such a title as The Hooded Cloak Chronicles might, at first read, make one think of a Fantasy/ Science Fiction formula, the closest I can come to a comparison of Chaffee's work is Jack London meeting Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book. It is very unusual to see the genre of the animal novel revived; and then also in the form that recalls, parable-like, the idea of the Bildungsroman. What makes it most special is, of course, the setting. I loved the evocations of Gabon: the landscape, the rain, the vegetation. What is more, this story has a very rare quality: namely, it's original. It doesn't follow a mode or emulate an example. It is uniquely its own book, on its own terms."

--Prof. dr. J. Th. Leerssen, author, and Director and Chair

of Modern European Literature, University of Amsterdam

By This Author

The Hooded Cloak Chronicles

Hooded Cloak Chronicles, Book 1: Keepers

Hooded Cloak Chronicles, Book 2: The Enchanted Jungle

Hooded Cloak Chronicles, Book 3: Mud-hut