The Hunt

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This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed

To the four people who love this island as much as I do:

The late, great Bobby Byrd,

my daughter, Temple,

Mark Vaughn,

and always, for Virginia

“What is past is prologue.”

William Shakespeare The Tempest

BOOK ONE

“What other dungeon is so dark

as one’s own heart!

What jailer so inexorable

as one’s self.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851

The creature was a terrifying specter. A bizarre distortion, part human, part animal, this scarred, panting, wild-eyed obscenity seemed proof that all things in nature are not perfect and that even God in his infinite wisdom is sometimes capable of a monstrous blunder.

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