In the spring of 1876, when two Colorado deputies return to the tree they’d tied their horses to before chasing a fugitive into a forest, the horses are gone, without a trace. As they walk back to town, leading their bound prisoner, they discuss the possible reasons for their predicament. Xavier Garza, the half-Zuni deputy, believes he knows the answer: Atahsaia—a Zuni word meaning cannibal demon. His partner, Thomas Wilkins, scoffs at such superstition, until the mounting evidence changes his perspective on monsters—and on trust.

Clay Dolan spent the first forty-five years of his life on the West coast, mostly California and Washington. For the past thirteen years he and his wife, who have been married nearly thirty-three years, have lived in Colorado, where Clay works as an editor and his wife writes novels. Clay has ghostwritten and edited dozens of books for others, but Fierce Hunger is the first he has attached his name to.