To Wake the Sleeping Dogs (Paperback)

Russell Harris's debut novel, To Wake the Sleeping Dogs, is beautifully written, dexterous in its movements between the present of Wesley, a lonely young man in New York, and his compelling though haunted Southern past. The story is driven by a potent narrative secret: what could have caused a successful young lawyer never to have sex in his life?

The answer isn't simple, and the labyrinthine psychological turns that Wesley follows after returning home to the African American community of Stony Creek, North Carolina further complicate his own confusion and fears.

Peopled with extraordinary characters, this community of Wesley's past and present has a story to reveal: his own and a much larger one -- of race relations, time and memory, and how to remain human in the face of devastating loss.