Excerpt from Salvage This World by Michael Farris Smith, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The women then stepped back inside the cabin, leaving the door open.

Jesse sprinted from the woods, the child waking with the sudden jolt and he let out a cry that she didn't acknowledge as she darted between old tires and a pile of firewood and a smoldering heap of trash and then she heard the growl as a wolf on a chain rose from slumber and lurched at her backside with its bonewhite fangs only to be held fast by a chain. She screamed and the wolf yelped but she didn't slow down, making it to the hatchback and hopping in just as a man in coveralls emerged from the trailer holding a coffee mug. He sipped and watched dumbeyed before realizing it was a stranger in the car. A stranger holding a child. He hollered and the two women came from the cabin and the three of them came down steps and ran for the hatchback as Jesse shifted into reverse, the car door open and flapping like a wing and then slamming shut when she hit the brakes, shifted into drive and stomped the gas, the tires spinning and the three of them trying to corral the hatchback like some untamed animal and as the car raced away from their cries a coffee mug crashed on the hood as if dropped from heaven, just as the tires caught firm on the gravel road.

Excerpted from Salvage This World by Zadie Smith. Copyright © 2023 by Zadie Smith. Excerpted by permission of Little Brown & Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.