The Unheld

Startling monsters and occult oddities abound in this chilling horror Western as a girl journeys across the haunted Montana Territory to rescue her father from an otherworldly creature.

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 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 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 the trio prepare for the confrontation with the beast, Charlie must decide if her father, a brusque man who has always withheld his affection, is ultimately worth saving.

With its blend of Western grit and supernatural menace, The Unheld is an unsettling and atmospheric 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.“Luke Larkin’s The Unheld will lull you with its sparse Montana vistas, beguile you with its headstrong heroine, then absolutely blow your doors off with one of the most unsettling and unusual monsters I can recall in horror fiction. This novel is a beast all its own.” —Nick Cutter, author of The Troop


“The Unheld is a ferocious and utterly original debut from a bold, unflinching literary voice destined to set the horror genre ablaze. I devoured this extraordinary book in as few sittings as possible and I soon found myself horrified, provoked, and inspired.” —Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke


“Equal parts classic western, Ray Bradbury, and H.P. Lovecraft. Reach across the abyss of loneliness and horror, taking the hand of Luke Larkin’s wonderful debut novel, The Unheld. You’ll be glad you did.” —Craig Johnson, author of the Longmire Series


“Monsters abound in The Unheld, but so do love, courage, and sacrifice. Luke Larkin has an eye for the beautiful and the grotesque, and weaves them together seamlessly in this horrifying, lovely novel.” —Shaun Hamill, author of A Cosmology of Monsters


“Reader, take heed, for this novel is akin to magic. A story that will grip you long after you have finished. I couldn’t put it down.” —Debra Magpie Earling, author of The Lost Journals of SacajeweaLuke Larkin is a queer writer living and working in Big Sky Country, where he received his MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana. The Unheld is his debut novel.