The Leopard Is Loose
A novel
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4.7 • 6 Ratings
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
The fragile, 1952 postwar tranquility of a young boy’s world explodes one summer day when a leopard escapes from the Oklahoma City zoo, throwing all the local residents into dangerous excitement, in this evocative story of a child’s confrontation with his deepest fears
For Grady McClarty, an ever-watchful but bewildered five-year-old boy, World War II is only a troubling, ungraspable event that occurred before he was born. But he feels its effects all around him. He and his older brother Danny are fatherless, and their mother, Bethie, is still grieving for her fighter-pilot husband. Most of all, Grady senses it in his two uncles: young combat veterans determined to step into a fatherhood role for their nephews, even as they struggle with the psychological scars they carry from the war.
When news breaks that a leopard has escaped from the Oklahoma City Zoo, the playthings and imagined fears of Grady’s childhood begin to give way to real-world terrors, most imminently the dangerous jungle cat itself. The Leopard Is Loose is a stunning encapsulation of America in the 1950s, and a moving portrait of a boy’s struggle to find his place in the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Harrigan makes a welcome return to fiction after Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas with a deeply felt story inspired by a leopard that escaped from the Oklahoma City Zoo in 1952. Five-year-old Grady McClarty lives with his older brother, Danny, and their widowed mother. Grady is riveted by the press coverage of the missing leopard and is afraid of being attacked by it. He's also puzzled by the behavior of his uncles, Emmett and Frank, combat veterans having trouble adjusting to civilian life. Frank drinks too much and gets fired from his car dealership job, while Emmett is stuck working as a draftsman when he'd prefer to be an artist. But the uncles dote on both boys, and when Grady suggests they join the leopard hunt, the men agree. Danny insists he sees the animal through some trees, and Emmett's armed pursuit of what turns out to be a Black man's dog inadvertently ignites the tensions that have been simmering in the city all summer. Though the racial issues are unsatisfyingly relegated to a plot point, Grady is an appealing narrator, and Harrigan elegantly conveys the strength of family bonds. Readers who can overlook a few narrative wobbles will find plenty of heart.
