Four friends convene for a week-long wilderness hunting trip at a secluded hunting facility called The Castle. A reluctant conscript on the trip, the unnamed narrator travels out of a guilty sense of obligation, forced to commemorate - in a way he finds morally ghoulish - the death of his best friend's son, who was killed in a mass shooting the year before. The novel traces the emotional ruptures following this violent, untimely death, along with the tensions of old friendships, father-son relationships marred by loss, betrayal, and a pervasive political and environmental disenchantment.
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