A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain - by Adrianne Harun (Paperback)

About the Book

" The seductive and chilling debut novel from the critically acclaimed author of The King of Limbo In isolated British Columbia, girls, mostly native, are vanishing from the sides of a notorious highway. Leo Kreutzer and his four friends are barely touched by these disappearances-until a series of mysterious and troublesome outsiders come to town. Then it seems as if the devil himself has appeared among them. In this intoxicatingly lush debut novel, Adrianne Harun weaves together folklore, mythology, and elements of magical realism to create a compelling and unsettling portrait of life in a dead-end town. A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain is atmospheric and evocative of place and a group of people, much in the way that Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones conjures the South, or Charles Bock's Beautiful Children provides a glimpse of the Las Vegas underworld: kids left to fend for themselves in a broken world-rendered with grit and poetry in equal measure"--

Book Synopsis

"Harun is heir apparent to Louise Erdrich and Harry Crews.... Readers will be swept away by this breathless, absorbing novel." --Claire Vaye Watkins, The New York Times Book ReviewIn this mysterious and chilling novel, girls, mostly Native, are vanishing from the sides of a notorious highway in the isolated Pacific Northwest. Leo Kreutzer and his friends are barely touched by these disappearances--until a series of enigmatic strangers arrive in their remote mountain town, beguiling and bewitching them. It seems as if the devil himself has appeared among them.

The intoxicatingly lush debut novel by the acclaimed author of The King of Limbo, A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain is an unsettling portrait of life in a dead-end town, as seductive and beautifully written as the devil's dark arts are wielded.

WINNER OF THE 2015 PINCKLEY PRIZE FOR DEBUT CRIME NOVEL

Review Quotes

"Readers will be swept away by this breathless, absorbing novel....A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain proves that Harun is heir apparent to Louise Erdrich and Harry Crews.... A mesmerizing incantation, harrowing and hypnotic."
--The New York Times Book Review

"An ingenious tale of myth, magic and murder....told in rich prose....[An] auspicious debut."
--Seattle Times
"Hypnotic...tantalizing...lush and evocative...Literary and genre lovers alike can find a striking new voice to celebrate in A Man Came Out of A Door in the Mountain."
--Kansas City Star

"A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain is literary magic of the highest order....It reads with the level care of a finely crafted story...but also with the fresh familiarity of a folksong....A spectacular read."
--The Vancouver Sun

"Haunting [and] hypnotic."
--Seattle Magazine

"A dense and mythic coming-of-age allegory, equal parts fanciful and horrifying...Each of Harun's people is fleshed out with maximum sureness and poetry."
--Missoula Independent

"In mesmerizing prose, debut novelist Harun spins a chilling tale shot through with both aching realism and age-old folktales, melding them together to capture a landscape lush with possibility and imagination and terrifying in its vast emptiness."
--Booklist, starred review

"Intertwining with real-world pain and loss, this debut novel gains an extra sense of risk and realism, pitting ordinary, human evil against supernatural wickedness."
--The Globe and Mail

"Much as it does to the novel's characters, the gothic ambiance wraps around the reader and won't let go."
--Library Journal

"Harun creates a masterfully bleak and spooky mood, and succinctly captures the desperation of the young people's lives...[a] promising debut."
--Publishers Weekly

"Through a complex narrative structure, Harun [invests] all of her action...with an aura of myth and folk legend."
--Kirkus Reviews

"A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain is a rich, haunting, original novel that captures evil in many forms--mythic, magic and chillingly real. Adrianne Harun's writing can hold you breathless."
--Jess Walter, author of The Zero and Beautiful Ruins

"I have long been a fan of Adrianne Harun's work, and A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain has raised my admiration to new heights. Writing with astonishing vividness, Harun weaves her own myths and magic as she plots her amazing tale."
--Margot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy

"Adrianne Harun's dark, mysterious novel is by turns Gothic and grittily realistic, astute and poetic in its evocation of evil everywhere."
--Andrea Barrett, National Book Award Winner and author of Ship Fever and Servants of the Map

About the Author

Adrianne Harun is the author of two short story collections, The King of Limbo, a Washington State Book Award finalist, and Catch, Release, winner of the Eric Hoffer Award. Stories from her collections have been listed as Notable in both Best American Short Stories and Best American Mystery Stories. Her first novel A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain was long-listed for the International Dublin Literary Award, a finalist for both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers' Award and the Washington State Book Award and winner of a Pinckley Prize for Debut Crime Fiction. A new novel, On the Way to the End of the World, will be published in September, 2023.