Leni Zumas Shares an Excerpt of Her New Book, “Wolf Bells”

Below is an excerpt from Wolf Bells (Algonquin Books, 224 pages, $28), the recently released novel from Leni Zumas.

Here at the brink of a forest on a cliff above a river in a valley between haunches of limestone was a steep brown ship of a house. The roots of the trees circling the ship had met corpses, been shredded by hooves, and seen a freak summer when every live thing froze. On the concrete foundation that sat on the dirt that sat on a crust of basalt were twenty rooms, nine bathrooms, and one porch. Metal and plastic and clay, glass and acrylic and wood, two kinds of cedar, three kinds of fir, a hundred deep winters stood through. Here were the dead and the living together—things that had happened and were happening, hair and skin from gone bodies dusting bodies in motion. Rooms