The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac

October 13, 2014
Shields’s collection of stories, Favorite Monster, playfully demonstrated the full psychological and dramatic potential of the supernatural tale. The same flashes of dark wit are on display in her first novel, which unfortunately doesn’t sustain the haunting energy of its opening scenes set on the Idaho-Washington border. Agnes Roebuck introduces her young son, Eli, to Mr. Krantz, the gigantic, uncouth “hominid” who smells like a “musty bearskin rug singed with a lit match” and for whom she will soon leave her family. The lovers disappear into the woods, leaving only a set of footprints and causing Eli to develop a lifelong obsession with feet big and small. After becoming a successful podiatrist, Eli increasingly devotes more time to hunting Sasquatches (Mr. Krantz in particular) and less to his family, whose members have their own brushes with the supernatural—lake monsters, tentacled shopkeepers, and unicorns. Shields generally deploys these fantastical elements without falling into full-fledged whimsy, but the magical flourishes distract from the central contest between Eli, a man of “nearly hairless pallor,” and his hirsute rival. Moreover, as it lurches from eerie moments of psychological horror to satirical scenes like a nonagenarian attending a “Zoophilia Support Group,” the novel’s tone proves as hard to pin down as the elusive creature at its center.

November 15, 2014
Obsession, love and monsters combine to create a new set of family values in short story writer Shields' (Favorite Monster, 2012) quirky first novel.Born and raised on the borderline between two states, Idaho and Washington, Eli Roebuck spends the rest of his life, and maybe even beyond, straddling two worlds. Obsessed with tracking down the elusive, hairy hominid-endearingly referred to as Mr. Krantz-who may be the Sasquatch and who wooed his disaffected mother away from her home and son in favor of life in the deep woods, Eli's search colors every relationship and area of his life. Shields' phantasmagoric and episodic tale chronicles Eli's and his family's near encounters with Mr. Krantz and close encounters with less-benign creatures including lake monsters, half-human puppies and bird-women over the course of at least 60 years. The porous border between the worlds of the mundane and the monsters is not as straight as the border between Idaho and Washington, and at times, elements of one almost completely obscure the elements of the other, as when Eli's painstakingly crafted "life-sized" model of Mr. Krantz wreaks havoc upon a small-town parade and terrifies rather than edifies. A sly humor permeates many of Shields' characterizations, but the pathos of the Roebuck-ian search is never obscured by it. A monster who undergoes laser hair treatments in the pursuit of love? Unicorns who bleed silver blood? Ape mothers and tentacled grandmas who complain about work conditions in the afterlife? Shields manages to utilize this mysterious and creepy cast of characters in surprisingly affecting ways to aid Eli on his quest. Imagine a mashup of Moby-Dick and Kakfa's Metamorphosis (with a hearty dash of Twin Peaks thrown in), and you'll begin to get an idea of what Shields' ambitious tale of disenchantment sets out to do.

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October 15, 2014
Mythological creatures inhabit the pages of Shields' sparkling first novel, interrupting and interfering with human lives. The most egregious affront occurs when Eli Roebuck is nine years old. Not only does a hairy Sasquatch, Mr. Krantz, come to visit Eli's mother, Agnes, but then she leaves with him, abandoning Eli and sparking his lifelong obsession with the Sasquatch. Though Eli becomes a podiatrist, his interest in cryptozoology gradually takes over his life. He leaves his first wife after her attempt to enchant him using a magical (but extremely smelly) hat goes awry and marries his poet girlfriend, who accompanies him on forays into the woods in search of Mr. Krantz. He neglects his two daughters. The discovery of a large Sasquatch bone caught in a bear trap only intensifies Eli's fixation, and over the years, his quest to find Mr. Krantz morphs into a desire to slay the beast. Eli's quest is not unlike Ahab's, and Shields writes with piercing insight about the monsters that keep us from connecting with one another in this funny and wise first novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)