
<p>In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, a twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable''s girlfriend for a bear. Both the twelve-year-old and his father become fugitives, pursued by the constable. Their lone protector is a fiercely libertarian logger, once a river driver, who befriends them. <br><br>In a story spanning five decades, <i>Last Night in Twisted River</i> - John Irving''s twelfth novel - depicts the recent half-century in the United States as a world ''where lethal hatreds were generally permitted to run their course.'' <br><br>From the novel''s taut opening sentence to its elegiac final chapter, what distinguishes Last Night in Twisted River is the author''s unmistakable voice, the inimitable voice of an accomplished storyteller.</p>