In the fall of 1978, on a 640-acre family ranch on Goat Mountain in northern California, an eleven-year-old boy joins his grandfather, father, and father's best friend on the family's annual deer hunt.

Goat Mountain is what this family owns and where they belong. It is where their history is kept, memories and stories that they share on each return visit. And for the first time, the boy's story will be added, if he can find a buck. Itching to shoot, he is ready.

When the men arrive at the gate to their land, the father discovers a poacher and sights him through the scope of his gun. He offers his son a look—a simple act that will explode in tragedy and transform these men and this family. David Vann creates a haunting and provocative novel, in prose devastating and beautiful in its precision, that explores our most primal urges and beliefs, the bonds of blood and religion that define and secure us, and the consequences of our actions—what we owe for what we've done.