Preview
  • Sacrificial Animals

  • A Novel
  • By: Kailee Pedersen
  • Narrated by: Yung-I Chang
  • Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
  • 3.5 out of 5 stars (2 ratings)

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Sacrificial Animals

By: Kailee Pedersen
Narrated by: Yung-I Chang
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Publisher's summary

Long-listed, Barnes and Noble Best New Books of the Year, 2024

Inspired by Kailee Pedersen's own journey being adopted from Nanning, China in 1996 and growing up on a farm in Nebraska, this rich and atmospheric supernatural horror debut explores an ancient Chinese mythology.

The last thing Nick Morrow expected to receive was an invitation from his father to return home. When he left rural Nebraska behind, he believed he was leaving everything there, including his abusive father, Carlyle, and the farm that loomed so large in memory, forever.

But neither Nick nor his brother Joshua, disowned for marrying Emilia, a woman of Asian descent, can ignore such summons from their father, who hopes for a deathbed reconciliation. Predictably, Joshua and Carlyle quickly warm to each other while Nick and Emilia are left to their own devices. Nick puts the time to good use and his flirtation with Emilia quickly blooms into romance. Though not long after the affair turns intimate, Nick begins to suspect that Emilia’s interest in him may have sinister, and possibly even ancient, motivations.

Punctuated by scenes from Nick’s adolescent years, when memories of a queer awakening and a shadowy presence stalking the farm altered the trajectory of his life forever, Sacrificial Animals explores the violent legacy of inherited trauma and the total collapse of a family in its wake.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

©2024 Kailee Pedersen (P)2024 Macmillan Audio
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: LGBTQ+
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Critic reviews

"This novel presents a contemplatively paced supernatural horror tale, centering family, trauma, and revenge, with unease infused into every detail...the tightly coiled tension will eventually explode; when it does, [readers] will be left gasping in awe. Pedersen’s debut skillfully balances character and atmosphere." —Library Journal, starred review

"This incantatory debut builds menace from its opening phrase. The author is merciless. She writes with a rare acuity...few readers are likely to quit before the final chapter...An assured and bloody fable heralds the arrival of a gifted new voice." —Kirkus Reviews

"The mythic Chinese figure of the nine-tailed fox spirit goes Midwestern Gothic in Pedersen’s unsettling debut. Literary horror that isn’t afraid to show its teeth. Pedersen is sure to win fans." —Publishers Weekly

Dear Listener,

How did my own journey of being adopted from China inspire my debut novel?
"After my adoption, I grew up in Nebraska and spent a lot of time on my family's rural farm. Being both Chinese and Midwestern, I was inspired to fuse the deeply Midwestern setting of Sacrificial Animals with Chinese mythology, and to include a Chinese American character, Emilia, whose presence thoroughly disrupts the insular Morrow family. It was important for me to capture the wild, eerie atmosphere of the rural Midwest in this novel, as well as the alienation, isolation, and complex family dynamics I experienced as an adoptee growing up in that environment."– Kailee Pederson, writer of Sacrificial Animals

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Beautifully Written

I'm emotionally destroyed, in a great way. The switch from the past to present is done well. You emphasize with Nick as a child but feel kind of disappointed with the man he grew up to be. The story has a very slow build but the writing holds you in. The last few chapters everything ties together spectacularly.

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