Boy in the Blue Hammock

Award-winning author Darren Groth’s epic story of a dog who will protect the last remaining member of his family, an intellectually disabled boy, at all costs as human civilization crumbles around them.

In a time of isolation and scarcity, a regressive regime rules with absolute power, turning neighbour against neighbour and crushing dissidence with deadly force. A microcosm of this monstrous time: the tiny Pacific Northwest town of Gilder.

In a house on the fringes of the decimated hamlet, Tao—a failed service dog turned pet—wakes to find his leash tied to the stairs, his hind leg broken and his family killed. With the world he knows shattered, there is one course of action: lay with his slain masters and wait for the enemy—the “hounds”—to return and end his life.

But it is not the hounds that find him—it is Kasper, fifteen years old, disabled, limited ability to speak, sole survivor of the family. With the discovery of Boy, Tao understands he now has a duty: guide the last living member of his pack through the ravaged streets of Gilder to safety. The destination? The only refuge he can conceive in a world gone mad? The site of his training five years before.

Boy in the Blue Hammock is an epic tale of loss and loyalty, of dissent and destruction, of assumption and ableism. With a powerful narrative and evocative prose, the novel poses one of the important questions of our time: When evil silences the people, who will protect those without a voice?