Excerpt from Nobody Gets Out Alive by Leigh Newman, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Our fire was huge and fantastical in the flat, white dark. I was afraid of the morning and what might happen, and I wasn't wrong to be afraid. Shotgunning, as shooter, you have to aim into the wind and snow behind you—the plane going faster than the racing pack—while at the same time compensating for the dive of the plane, so that you not only don't miss the wolf but also don't get disoriented and shoot the propeller. And kill you both.

Up front, the pilot has to get so low to the ground and swoop at such radical angles to keep up with the pack—who keep spreading out over the snow like dots of quicksilver from a broken thermometer—but not stall and crash. And kill you both.

"Think about it this way," said Benny. "We live or die together." I was nineteen by then and he was the age I am now—sixty-seven. I held on to his words as though they were special to our situation, not an agreement you enter into with every person you ever care about. Even just in passing.


Outside, at the far end of the dock, Donald went on tossing out his rope, calling across the water, "Here, Pinkie. Here, Pinkie," his voice squeaky with anticipation, his casts surprisingly sure-handed.

Pinkie, I almost told him, was long past coming to anybody. Pinkie was charging down the shoreline, trampling kiddie pools and sprinklers, digging into professional-grade landscaping while mothers chased after her with shovels and fathers contemplated lawsuits and the implications of those lawsuits at the homeowners association meeting—all of which they could avoid if they just jumped in the plane and took off for a few hours to remember why they had moved to Alaska in the first place.

The wind died down. Rainbows slicked along the shallows, bright with the smell of algae and avgas. Donald hardly noticed when I sidled up beside him, so intent was he on his task. He tossed out another cast—a perfect one, ending in a satisfying thunk as the rib hit the surface of the water. He cast again. And cast again. "Pinkie!" he said, unable even now to give up.

Excerpted from Nobody Gets Out Alive by Leigh Newman. Copyright © 2022 by Leigh Newman. Excerpted by permission of Scribner. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.