The Beautiful and the Wild

＂It’s summer in Alaska and the light surrounding the shipping-container-turned-storage-shed where Liv Russo is being held prisoner is fuzzy and grey. Around her is thick forest and serrated mountains. In front of her, across a clearing, is a low-slung cabin with a single window that spills a wash of yellow light onto bare ground. Illuminated in that light is the father of her child, a man she once loved. A man who is now her jailor. Liv vows to do anything to escape. Carrying her own secrets and a fierce need to protect her young son, Liv must navigate a new world where extreme weather, starvation, and grizzlies are not the only threats she faces. With winter closing in, she knows she must reckon with her past and the choices that brought her to the wilds of Alaska if she is ever going to make it out alive＂--

Peggy Townsend is an award-winning journalist and author. Her work has appeared in Catamaran literary magazine, Santa Cruz Noir, Globe Magazine, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications. Twice she lived for seven weeks in her van, traveling to Alaska and along the back roads of the U.S.