Ten Sleep

Greta Molina is trying to figure out her life after dropping out of college. She accepts a job from a school friend, helping him navigate a 10-day cattle drive in Wyoming. However, this is no ordinary route. An ancient evil rules the canyon and offers everlasting life every 100 years, at a very steep price. On the first day, Greta’s ATV breaks down, and she watches an impossibly huge bird swoop down to snatch the dead calf she was dragging back to town. This is only the first of the strange and threatening creatures Greta will encounter, some of which she will even befriend. Belardes’s (The Deading) slow burn builds tension, with Greta recounting each day’s events, followed by chapters from the point of view of the creatures who populate the landscape. Terror and tension methodically and distressingly escalate, day by day, until the story bursts open with the truth behind “mother canyon.”