From the bestselling writer of THE LADIES comes an action-packed adventure about endangered animals and the ones who protect them.

Principally set in the wild and sparsely inhabited Channel Islands off the coast of Santa Barbara, T. C. Boyle’s powerful novel combines pulse-pounding adventure having a socially mindful, richly humane story regarding the dominion we attempt to exert, for better or even worse, over the natural globe. Alma Boyd Takesue is a National Recreation area Service biologist who’s about When the Killing’s Done: A Novel spearheading the initiatives to save the islands’ endangered indigenous creatures from intrusive species like rats and feral pigs, which, in her watch, must be eliminated. Her antagonist, Dave LaJoy, is certainly a dreadlocked regional businessman who, along with his fan, the folksinger Anise Reed, is normally fiercely opposed to the killing of any species whatsoever and will head to any measures to subvert the programs of Alma and her co-workers.

Their confrontation plays out in a series of escalating scenes where these characters violently confront each other, contemplate acts of sabotage, court danger, and tempt the amazing harmful power of nature itself. Boyle deepens his story by heading back in time to relate the harrowing tale of Alma’s grandmother, Beverly, who was simply the sole survivor of a 1946 shipwreck in the channel, aswell as the tragic tale of Anise’s mom, Rita, who in the past due 1970s lived and done a sheep ranch on Santa Cruz Island. In dramatizing this collision between protectors of the environment and animal rights activists, Boyle is, in his characteristic fashion, examining one of the important queries of our period: Who has the right of possession of the land, the waters, the very lives of all creatures who share this planet around?

When the Killing’s Performed will offer no transparent answers, but just like the Tortilla Curtain, Boyle’s classic take on illegal immigration, it’ll touch you deeply and put you able to decide.