MOONRISE / Joseph Hagen (ePub)

This young adult novel is filled with adventure, thrills, mystery, magic, and the challenge of having the difficulties of reaching for adulthood complicated up to and possibly beyond our hero's breaking point. 17-year-old Alan Driggers was the sole survivor of a camping trip in Devil's Den State Park near Fort Hurst, Arkansas. His older brother, and their friends were all killed by wolves. Alan fought off one of the beasts managing to stab it in an eye as it bit into his shoulder. As the beast retreated, Alan lay bleeding, in pain, and shocked to be alive. Days later Alan received a strange and frightening visit from a man claiming to be one of the wolves which had attacked at Devil's Den. He learned that the minor wound to his shoulder was the least of his injuries. Alan had been cursed and Salvador, the werewolf that bit him, wanted revenge for his ruined eye. The bizarre experience deepened further when Autumn Fire, a witch and werewolf hunter, found Alan and offered her help. As the curse increased Alan's aggression, strength, endurance, and speed, Autumn, with the help of police detective, Ben Wise, worked to prevent the curse from turning Alan into a monster and to prepare for his next meeting with Salvador. Alan's challenges of being a teen were dwarfed by his new threats. Mentally and physically he was changing, and his experience at Devil's Den warned that while he'd managed to save his physical life, all other aspects of it might soon be lost forever. His hopes were few. His greatest was that the magic, which created the werewolf's curse, might also save him.