"When Lumen Fowler looks back on her childhood, she wouldn't have guessed she would become a kind suburban wife, a devoted mother. In fact, she never thought she would escape her small and peculiar hometown. When We Were Animals is Lumen's confessional: as a well-behaved and over-achieving teenager, she fell beneath the sway of her community's darkest, strangest secret. For one year, beginning at puberty, every resident "breaches" during the full moon. On these nights, adolescents run wild, destroying everything in their path. Lumen resists. Promising her father she will never breach, she investigates the mystery of her community's traditions and the stories erased from the town record. But the more we learn about the town's past, the more we realize that Lumen's memories are harboring secrets of their own. A gothic coming-of-age tale for modern times, When We Were Animals is a dark, provocative journey into the American heartland."-- ย Read more...
As a well-behaved and over-achieving teenager, Lumen Fowler knows she is different. While the rest of her peers are falling beneath the sway of her community's darkest rite of passage, she resists, choosing to hole herself up in her room with books for company. For Lumen has a secret. Her mother never 'breached' and she knows she won't either. ย Read more...