Book of the Week July 9, 2026
Twelve-year-old Charlie spends most of her days in a dilapidated cabin, cleaning and waiting for her father to return home with today’s catch, with only a book of fairytales to keep her company. While it used to be squirrels or deer, the animals Webber has been bringing back lately are strange—an owl with four wings, chipmunks with extra legs, and a three-headed boar that draws the attention of Mr. Theodore Elias, a fancy newcomer from the East to the tiny Montana town of Plainset, on the edge of western expansion. Something sinister is afoot, or more accurately, ahand, as the most bizarre of the creatures spotted—the one that snatches Charlie’s father, and is suspected of picking off miners from a local operation—seems to be made out of human hands. Larkin juxtaposes the horror of the unknown entity with the deep feelings of loneliness felt by Charlie, who’s motherless and fierce, and Theodore, who still carries the hand of his lost love, Lawrence, with the tales of Patton, an Indigenous sheriff also searching for the beast in hopes of healing a trust broken with his family. When members of Theodore’s secret society arrive, the hunt intensifies, but still, no one can say where these supernatural beings came from. Full of wonder and longing, The Unheld is a powerful story of found family and redemption in an atmospheric setting on the frontier of reality and possibility.—Dodie Ownes