There are a few creatures left in the world who live still untamed, prowling through the rocks, blinking slowly at the encroaching civilization far below. On China’s Bountiful Black Mountain, a snow leopard hunts alone, artifact of a vanishing age. But hungry, desperate, when he is finally forced away from the cold stones of his mountain home toward the tents and fires of the valley, he encounters an impossible, startling world. And as we follow him on his journey, as the talented pen of Thomas McIntyre shows us how we appear through the leopard’s eyes, it’s a vision that will finally startle us as well.
More than fourteen years in the making, at the intersection of magic realism and artful allegory, with the detail of our best nature writing and a language resonant of poetry as much as fiction, The Snow Leopard’s Tale is a novel for the ages. Like all the best stories, it will change the way you see the world.
About Thomas McIntyre
An award-winning professional writer for more than 35 years, Tom McIntyre has authored thousands of magazine articles and television scripts, and is the author of such critically-acclaimed books as Days Afield, Dreaming the Lion, and Seasons & Days. Born and raised in California, he moved to northern Wyoming almost twenty years ago with his wife Elaine and son Bryan. The Snow Leopard’s Tale is his first novel.
Endorsements
“Tom McIntyre has written a story so beyond the ken of our quotidian existence that it is un-human, inhuman, and super-human all at once. The Snow Leopard’s Tale is strange, in the sense of the Latin root of the word, ‘outside the place we’re in.’ McIntyre’s meld of man and beast alerts the beast in me and alarms the man.”
— P. J. O’Rourke
“The Snow Leopard’s Tale is mesmeric. Tom McIntyre has compressed so many things into so few pages that I can think of only a few other short books that can compare. It was worth the wait for all of us who look forward to reading anything with his name under the title.”
— John Barsness
“The Snow Leopard’s Tale is a mystical pilgrimage into that wild country where animal passion and the human heart begin to walk the very same trail. Whether one has been in the business of adventuring, as Thomas McIntyre has, or has enjoyed such adventures from the safety of one’s armchair, The Snow Leopard’s Tale is a haunting, beautifully written, and thought-provoking tale, as all great parables are. ”
— Ted Kerasote
“McIntyre’s tale may have predecessors, but it is unique. I strain for literary comparisons and think: Kipling, the classical Chinese poets, early Patrick O’Brian, Hopkins. I search for a definition of its animating presence: the predator, the Buddhist sage, the hunter. All fall short. I stand before The Snow Leopard’s Tale in awe and with a little envy. It is a gem, an uncanny evocation of the cold ancient dusty highlands of Central Asia, and could only have come from Tom McIntyre. It is his best.”
— Stephen J. Bodio
Book Information
Dimensions: 5 x 8
Price: $16.95
Release Date: September 15, 2012
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Excerpt
Where the mountain peaks ended in the sky, Xue Bao parted three eyelids. The third, red-stitched membrane floated off corneas clear as bright pools of water. Outside the hollow where he lay curled under overhanging dry gray stones, the sun rose smoke orange, shaded by the dust whorled by the wind of winter’s end. As his head lolled between loose front paws, Xue Bao watched the morning light sweep toward him. The raw air carried the sharp bark of a marmot; and he listened on, his nose distinguishing scents. After a time he unwound his body and on his side stretched heavy-muscled legs, spanning his toes, claws revealed like petals opening. Rising to his paws, he swayed his back, yawned eburnean fangs, shook down from neck to thrust hind right leg, flicked his tail, and strode from beneath the rock shelf on Bountiful Black Mountain into the sunrise that spilled across the east in the rufous tint of sand-fox fur.
