Denfeld, R: Sleeping Giants A Novel

Rene Denfeld is a remarkable novelist. In cool, bewitching prose Sleeping Giants explores how we hurt one another, how we try to heal and asks what families are made of. The tenacity of the beautifully drawn characters and the glimpses of hope in the darkness make it impossible to look away from this heartrending and enthralling story. - Gilly Macmillan, New York Times bestselling author of The Nanny

"Enthralling . . . . a heartfelt mystery that will keep readers turning pages late into the night." - Publishers Weekly

"The cold, pounding ocean, treacherous with undercurrents, mauls the Oregon coast and sets the highs and lows of this magnetizing tale of loss and discovery. . . . In her fourth novel, acclaimed Denfeld (The Butterfly Girl, 2019) draws on her experiences as a social justice investigator and foster mother to astutely portray neurodivergent characters in a transfixingly atmospheric, brilliantly plotted, heart-seizing drama of cruelty and trauma, cover-ups and murder, and the depthless mysteries of pain and love." - Booklist (starred review)

"Sleeping Giants is a literary page-turner, at once an absorbing mystery and a deeply moving unraveling of past wrongs. Rene Denfeld's new book is as grave, compelling, and powerful as the sneaker waves that haunt its landscape." - Flynn Berry, New York Times bestselling author of Northern Spy

"Rene Denfeld is one of the handful of living writers I most admire, and Sleeping Giants may be her masterpiece. Haunting, frightening and moving in equal measure, her new novel is a sublime page turner, evoking beauty and terror in the same moment. I read it in an afternoon, enthralled, and am still under its spell." - Elizabeth Hand, author of A Haunting on the Hill and Generation Loss.

"Rene Denfeld keeps writing books I have to read in one sitting because I can't stop. Like her previous books, Sleeping Giants has the pace and excitement of a thriller but the compassion and generosity that can otherwise seem so antithetical to the genre as it enters into the lives of an adopted and an institutionalized child and those of other people who are somehow stranded, bereft or disconnected. Plot and characters come together in a gripping finale." - Rebecca Solnit

"As in her remarkable novel, The Child Finder, which I recommend to everyone, Rene Denfeld's Sleeping Giants expertly marries a taut, immersive suspense narrative, with a clear-eyed and deeply humanitarian look at the complex repercussions of childhood trauma. Denfeld has a powerful way of imbuing harrowing situations and subject matter with unexpected lyricism, and truly affecting, sensitively-drawn characters. There's no one quite like her in publishing today." - Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife and When the Stars Go Dark

"The cold, pounding ocean, treacherous with undercurrents, mauls the Oregon coast and sets the highs and lows of this magnetizing tale of loss and discovery. . . . In her fourth novel, acclaimed Denfeld (The Butterfly Girl, 2019) draws on her experiences as a social justice investigator and foster mother to astutely portray neurodivergent characters in a transfixingly atmospheric, brilliantly plotted, heart-seizing drama of cruelty and trauma, cover-ups and murder, and the depthless mysteries of pain and love." - Booklist