A boy, his dog and a monstrous friend chasing down his father's killer. First Place Winner for Horror in the Firebird Book Awards. First Place Winner for Dark Fantasy in the Chrysalis BREW Book Excellence Awards. First Runner-Up for General Fiction in the San Francisco Book Festival. Silver Medal for Dark Fantasy, Global Book Awards. Bronze Medal for Dark Fantasy, Bookfest Book Awards. Finalist for Fiction-Fantasy, American Writing Awards. If you like Dark Fantasy and Magical Realism — if you love dogs and riddles, folktales and Shakespeare, coming of age stories and the rivers and mountains of the West — then you'll enjoy this Naturalist Western Gothic. 16-year-old Clayton Stonefly, who lost his parents four years ago and is being raised by his Granma Lina, just wants to be brave like Dammit, his dog, and face the town bully, Big Jim. That, or read Shakespeare on the porch alone in the Idaho wilderness. But Clay has an unfortunate gift: he’s haunted by monstrous dreams of his family’s dead nemesis, Das Ungeheuer, and every time he tells a story, someone dies. Clay learns that his parents kept many secrets from him — not the least being there’s a family calling that involves monster-wrangling, his father's murderer is on the loose, and a family axe with a mind of its own may be trying to talk him into vengeance. “If Faulkner wrote fantasy, he'd have written something like this… unique, lyrical, and steeped in Americana folklife.” -- Sunyi Dean, author of The Book Eaters "If Faulkner wrote fantasy, he'd have written something like this... unique, lyrical, and steeped in Americana folklife." --Sunyi Dean, author of The Book Eaters "It's a red-eye cup of coffee, a dark PNW brew... A Gothic Fantasy with a high-noon shot of 'Hamlet.'" --G.K. Undine, author of Plecoptera "This is a fable, a folk tale, a coming-of-age, gothic Americana nightmare-scape about bullies and reckonings, heroes, villains, and very good dogs. This book is for folks who crave deliberate, flowing prose, careful overlays of imagery and intension, and some damn fine action. I hope with my whole heart that this book finds its readers and they are plentiful. It is a painstaking work of art, pain, and through it all, beauty." --Arlo Z. Graves, Author of The Ice Moves for No One and Black Rose. "If 'Stranger Things' fell in a river in the Idaho wilderness and crawled out dripping with revenge. A tasty, mythic, bloody treat." --Kwesi Dansonne, author of The Legend of Das Ungeheur and Other Lost Tales Like many of you, I've survived some bleak years — I viscerally get what it's like to be a dying ember.  The characters in my novels believe in the power of love and are fearless, sarcastic and strange.  In Fly Stone, Fly I sought to write a novel I'd read more than once, each time getting better.  Those are the kind of novels I treasure most. Fly Stone, Fly  is not for everyone -- no story is.  Still, I hope that you'll come to love the mythic currents and homage to Shakespeare that stir under the surface of its Coming of Age, Western revenge plot. "It's a Red-Eye cup of coffee. A dark, Pacific Northwest brew... A gothic fantasy with a high-noon shot of ' Hamlet .'" — G.K. Undine "Fly Stone, Fly defies categorization... It is soul music, it is the blues. The further in you go the more you feel its thumping multi-chambered heart ." --Kwesi Dansonne "A Western Gothic revenge story for anyone who hates bullies and got picked on for being strange." -- Eric Ortlund, author of All God's Die and Other Stories "If Faulkner wrote fantasy, he'd have written something like this... unique, lyrical, and steeped in Americana folklife." -- Sunyi Dean, author of The Book Eaters Dust Kunkel grew up in Ghana, West Africa. With a mother from Montana and a father from Oregon, he returned to the Pacific Northwest at age seventeen and fell in love with a Northwest girl and the rivers, mountains and canyons of the Northwest. Over the years he has taught literature, guided the Salmon River in Idaho, foster parented teenagers, managed outdoor schools, and directed student leadership programs at a university. Dust has a BA in Literature, an MSc in Outdoor Education from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and is an Executive Coach. Dust and his wife, Jan, live in Oregon City, Oregon, and have two daughters launched from the nest, and two elderly retriever-mixes, Bowie and Percy, who will not launch from any nest. In his free time, Dust reads, goes on adventures with Jan, writes and performs songs and fly-fishes the rivers of the Pacific Northwest.