Theft: A Novel [Paperback]

Willa Robbins is a master tracker working to reintroduce the Mexican wolf, North America’s most endangered mammal, to the American Southwest. But when Colorado police recruit her to find her own brother, Zeb, a confessed murderer, she knows skill alone will not sustain her. Willa is thrown back into the past, surfacing memories of a childhood full of intense love, desperate mistakes, and gentle remorse. Trekking through exquisite New Mexico and Colorado landscapes, with Zeb two steps ahead and the police two steps behind, Willa must wrangle her desire to reunite with her brother and her own guilt about their violent past.

Winner of both the Willa Award and Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Award, this debut novel's lyrical prose gives voice to the wildlife and land surrounding these beautifully flawed characters, breathing life into the southwestern terrain. Within this treacherous and mesmerizing landscape,Theftillustrates the struggle to piece together the fragile traces of what has been left behind, allowing for new choices to take shape. This is a story about family, about loss, and about a search for answers.

Praise forTheft:

Theftis the best book I've read in as long as I can remember. —Catherine Ryan Hyde, author ofPay It Forward

BK Loren writes sentences, paragraphs, chapters like lit fuses.Theftis an ambitious and distinctive fiction debut, taking us into the lives of two endangered species, Mexican wolves and a Southwest underclass family, equally hunted by fate. —Ivan Doig, author ofWork Song

“Written with clarity and vision, with prose that is both lyrical and visceral, Loren brings us on a journey of love, human fragility and the meaning of family. Theft is a story about piecing together what was left behind, a bighearted tale delivered in language that is as lovely as the Southwestern landscape it describes. An amazing accomplishmentl#ò