The Captive Condition

A seemingly idyllic Midwestern college town turns out to be a nexus of horror in this spellbinding novel—emotionally and psychologically complex, at once chilling and deliciously dark—from a thrilling new voice in fiction. When Emily Ryan is found drowned in the family pool, pumped full of barbiturates and alcohol, a series of events with cataclysmic consequences ensues. Emily’s lover, a college professor, finds himself responsible for her twin daughters, whose piercing stares fill him with the guilt and anguish he so desperately tries to hide from his wife. A low-level criminal named The Gonk takes over the cottage of a reclusive elderly artist, complete with graveyard and moonshine still, and devises plans for both. His young apprentice, haunted by inner demons, seeks retribution for the professor’s wicked deeds. The town itself, buzzing into decadent life after sundown, traps its inhabitants in patterns of inexplicable behavior all the while drawing them toward a night in which the horror will reach its disturbing and inevitable conclusion. Delving into the deepest recesses of the human capacity for evil, Kevin P. Keating’s masterful novel will captivate readers from first to last.