Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jul 2017
288 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
An electrifying novel about the primal and unyielding bond between a mother and her son, and the lengths she'll go to protect him.
The zoo is nearly empty as Joan and her four-year-old son soak up the last few moments of playtime. They are happy, and the day has been close to perfect. But what Joan sees as she hustles her son toward the exit gate minutes before closing time sends her sprinting back into the zoo, her child in her arms. And for the next three hours - the entire scope of the novel - she keeps on running.
Joan's intimate knowledge of her son and of the zoo itself - the hidden pathways and under-renovation exhibits, the best spots on the carousel and overstocked snack machines - is all that keeps them a step ahead of danger.
A masterful thrill ride and an exploration of motherhood itself - from its tender moments of grace to its savage power - Fierce Kingdom asks where the boundary is between our animal instinct to survive and our human duty to protect one another. For whom should a mother risk her life?
"Starred Review. A searing exploration of motherhood at its most basic." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Phillips manages to combine beautiful imagery with heart-pounding, nerve-fraying intensity. ... Fans of literary page-turners, like Sunil Yapa's Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist, won't want to miss this." - Booklist
"Starred Review. Phillips' characters are exquisitely rendered, her prose is artful and evocative ... Poignant and profound, this adrenaline-fueled thriller will shatter readers like a bullet through bone." - Kirkus
"Phillips (A Little Bit of Spectacular; The Hidden Summer) skillfully captures the terror of the situation but also the beautiful minutiae of our everyday lives." - Library Journal
"It tore at every maternal fiber in my body. I couldn't put it down." - Fiona Barton, New York Times bestselling author of The Widow
"Fierce Kingdom is a bold exploration of the ferocity of a mother's love - riveting and beautiful, and all too real. You'll find yourself asking, what would I do? It's brilliant." - Shari Lapena, New York Times bestselling author of The Couple Next Door
"I devoured it in one breathless sitting. Outstanding." - Clare Mackintosh, New York Times bestselling author of I Let You Go
"This is an elegant, taut, and tense survival story that explores the boundaries of parental love. By pitting love against fear, Gin Phillips questions the opposing forces of family bonds and shows how fierce one mother's love can be." - Claire Cameron, author of The Last Neanderthal and The Bear
"I loved this book not only as a mother, but as a woman - and a feminist - living in a world teeming with pressing domestic details along with unpredictable, casual violence." - Susanna Daniel, award-winning author of Sea Creatures
This information about Fierce Kingdom was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Gin Phillips is the award-winning author of The Well and the Mine and Come In and Cover Me. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama, with her family.
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