Bay of Souls
Bay of Souls is the seventh published novel by American novelist Robert Stone. It was published in 2003. Plot summary Bay of Souls begins in the vein of James Dickey's Deliverance (1970), with the novel's central character Michael Ahearn, and his cronies hunting in the wilds of Minnesota. But Michael's attempts at Hemingwayesque role-playing are limited by his daydreaming, he brings a gun only to justify his presence out in the woods. While Michael waits in a deer stand, a strange hunter despairingly stumbles by, trying to haul a large buck on a pitifully inadequate wheelbarrow. Michael takes pleasure in the other man's humiliation, but the experience proves prophetic of several burdens assumed during the novel and the difficulty characters will have sustaining them. For instance, soon after the hunting incident, Michael's son Paul almost dies from exposure after searching for his dog in the snow. Then Michael's wife, Kristin, breaks her leg trying to carry her son home. After this trauma, Michael finds his relations with his wife deteriorating, and so he turns to the attentions of Lara Purcell, a professor of political science. A femme fatale with an interest in Caribbean voodoo, Lara leads Michael into high-stakes adultery,