by Kathi Appelt
First published 2008
A pregnant calico cat crawls under the porch of a ramshackle house in the Louisiana bayou. There she meets Ranger, a hound dog whose master beats him regularly. The man who owns the house carries deep scars from his own father's violence decades earlier. His rage burns as hot as the ancient hatred of a serpent trapped in a jar, buried beneath an old tree for a thousand years. When lightning struck that tree twenty-five years ago, it failed to destroy what lay hidden inside. Now the cat gives birth to kittens in the safety beneath the porch. Ranger protects them as best he can, but the man's cruelty threatens everything fragile in this dark corner of the swamp. The stories of the imprisoned snake, the scarred man, and the small family of creatures weave together across time. Love and loyalty struggle against cycles of violence that stretch back through generations.
Genres: animals, literary-fiction, dark-fantasy, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, emotional, intimate
Tropes: cycles-of-abuse, found-family
Setting: Louisiana
Period: 20th-century
Audiobook · Simon & Schuster
Content warnings: abuse, animal-death, domestic-violence