In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, an anxious twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable�s girlfriend for a bear. Both the twelve-year-old and his father become fugitives, forced to run from Coos County�to Boston, to southern Vermont, to Toronto�pursued by the implacable constable. Their lone protector is a fiercely libertarian logger, once a river driver, who befriends them.In a story spanning five decades, Last Night in Twisted River�John Irving�s twelfth novel�depicts the recent half-century in the United States as �a living replica of Coos County, where lethal hatreds were generally permitted to run their course.� From the novel�s taut opening sentence��The young Canadian, who could not have been more than fifteen, had hesitated too long��to its elegiac final chapter, Last Night in Twisted River is written with the historical authenticity and emotional authority of The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany. It is also as violent and disturbing a story as John Irving�s breakthrough bestseller, The World According to Garp.What further distinguishes Last Night in Twisted River is the author�s unmistakable voice�the inimitable voice of an accomplished storyteller. Near the end of this moving novel, John Irving writes: �We don�t always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly�as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth�the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives.�From the Hardcover edition.