from Publishers Weekly, was an Amazon Editor's Choice Pick, and an Apple Audio Must Listen selection. His novel, Sweetgirl was long-listed for The Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize, was a Michigan Notable Book Award winner, an Indie Next Pick, and was named one of Ploughshares Best Books of the New Year.
Mulhauser is the author of Greetings from Cutler County: A Novella and Stories, and received his MFA in Fiction from UNC-Greensboro. He is also a proud graduate of North Central Michigan College and Central Michigan University. He lives currently in Durham, North Carolina with his wife, two children, and dog.
Mulhauser applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Fair Chase, and shared the following:
Fair Chase passes the Page 69 Test!Visit Travis Mulhauser's website.
Page 69 is the opening of a chapter in which most of the novel’s main characters are present, and discussing the wolf that is the centerpiece of the story.
A gray wolf, an endangered species, has arrived in northern Michigan for the first time in over a century, and the Sawbrook family has assigned itself to protect the animal from a scared community.
Cutler County faces a construction stoppage and real economoic hardship if the federal laws designed to protect endangered species are engaged, and nobody, including the politicians and state government agencies, want that to happen. The Sawbrooks view protecting the wolf as both the right thing to do, the best way to stop the development projects that continue to threaten their property and way of life. Even if it means taking on some poachers.
The page also provides an opportunity for Lucy, a park ranger, to helpfully explain that the wolf is an alpha, not because it asserts thoughtless dominance, but because it’s a leader who would be trusted to make decisions on the pack’s behalf because of its intelligence, toughness, and empathy.
Q&A with Travis Mulhauser.
--Marshal Zeringue