In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, an anxious twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable's girlfriend for a bear. Both the twelve-year-old and his father become fugitives, forced to run from Coos County--to Boston, to southern Vermont, to Toronto--pursued by the implacable constable. " From the novel's taut opening sentence--"The young Canadian, who could not have been more than fifteen, had hesitated too long"--to its elegiac final chapter, Last Night in Twisted River is written with the historical authenticity and emotional authority of The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany.

What further distinguishes Last Night in Twisted River is the author's unmistakable voice--the inimitable voice of an accomplished storyteller. Near the end of this moving novel, John Irving writes: "We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. "From the Hardcover edition.