“The Unheld” Author Luke Larkin in conversation with local horror authors Jonathan Weber and Laramie Dean at Fact & Fiction

About the book: Charlie’s life is a lonely one. While other twelve-year-olds are in school, she spends her days skinning the animals her mercurial father hunts in the wild woods just outside their cabin. And the woods and its twisted creatures—an owl with four wings, a boar with two heads, a fox with gills—are becoming stranger by the day.

One night, a nightmarish beast neither animal nor human appears and drags Charlie’s father into the wilderness. To find him, she enlists the aid of two unlikely allies also in search of the beast: an Englishman with a connection to a mysterious occult society and a Northern Cheyenne policeman exiled for a crime he didn’t commit. Yet as she and her allies prepare for a confrontation with the Beast, Charlie must decide if her father, a brusque man who has always withheld his affection, is ultimately worth saving.

The Unheld is an unsettling and soulful horror novel about loneliness, human connection, and how we find each other in a world that seems designed to alienate. With this assured debut, Luke Larkin marks his arrival in the genre and proves the American frontier still harbors untapped stories in its shadows.

About the author: Based in Missoula, Montana, Luke Larkin is a queer author living and working in Big Sky country. He received his MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana, and his work can be found in places like HAD, Sonora Review, Popshot, Firewords, and elsewhere. THE UNHELD, his debut novel, is slated to release in Fall 2026 from Hyperion Avenue.

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