Excerpt from Breaking Wild by Diane Les Becquets, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

She turned on her flashlight and reached for her phone to check the time. Three thirty. There was a text from her husband. Hey, are you having a good night? I'm getting stuff done. It's good. Miss you like skin. She wrote back, I am blessed to have you, but I am seriously going to try harder.

Still bundled in her sleeping bag, she shed her long underwear, then crawled out of the bag and unzipped the opening flap of the tent, the air not more than twenty degrees, she was sure. Snow was now falling in sporadic flakes, melting almost as soon as it hit the ground. Next to her tent was a plastic container where she'd packed a set of clothes for each day, each item having been washed clean of grocery store detergents and perfumes and her own perspiration. Moving quietly so as not to wake Kenny or Aaron, she pulled on a fresh layer of thermals, wool socks, camouflage pants, a camouflage fleece jacket, her green hiking boots, and her brown fleece hat. She switched out her flashlight for her headlamp, which she secured over her hat. Carrying a roll of toilet paper, she walked toward the woods behind the tent.

Less than five feet from the back wall of the tent was a divot in the ground carved out by the fresh claw marks of a bear, a mother, most likely, digging for bugs for her young. Amy Raye calculated the distance again. Less than two of her own strides. Tired, cold, and fully aware of just how close the bear had been to her while she'd slept, something like déjà vu grazed her heart, as if she had already stood here a half-dozen times, and if she had, some other living being had stood here within breathing room of her a half-dozen times, too.

Aaron's tent was across from hers, about fifty feet. If she stood still, she could hear his snores muffled beneath the covers. Kenny's tent was farther away, south of the fire pit and cookstove.

She walked about thirty yards north of the camp to Aaron's truck, lowered the tailgate for a table, and made coffee, every move calculated so that she wouldn't wake the others, so that they wouldn't insist on going with her. Aaron, whose breath smelled of cigarette smoke, and whose body labored when he walked, especially when climbing uphill. Or Kenny, sweet Kenny, who reminded her of a quarter horse stallion in the middle of summer, of Tennessee and hollers and hay trucks and alfalfa, and all those places she missed too often but knew she would never go back to.

The snow had stopped falling, but its moisture still coated the air. She drank a large cup of coffee, then poured another, more for the warmth than the caffeine. Silence hovered over her like a tarpaulin. The wilderness wasn't asleep. She knew it had awoken with her first stirring, was waiting for her next move, watching her. Its stillness was a sure sign. Sitting on the tailgate, her legs folded underneath her, she eased herself into the silence, becoming the same wilderness. The caffeine began to take effect and burned in her stomach with the anticipation she thrived from.

Amy Raye had hunted since she was a girl, going out with her grandfather. She didn't hunt elk then, nor did she hunt with a bow. Bow hunting came later. She hunted whitetail deer with a .243 Winchester rifle, and later a .280 Remington. While other girls turned sweet sixteen, she learned how to field-dress a deer.
Amy Raye's husband, Farrell, didn't hunt. He'd never even held a gun. It was after he and Amy Raye had met that she'd switched to bow hunting. Farrell didn't want guns in the house, especially with his daughter, Julia, who was four years old at the time and living with him. He was a man who hated violence of any kind, including harming the dreams of another. And it was that very nature of him that would have never let him stand in the way of his wife having the opportunity to make a trip like this. He would tell her that he loved the immensity of her and that this was part of that immensity.

Excerpted from Breaking Wild by Diane Les Becquets. Copyright © 2016 by Diane Les Becquets. Excerpted by permission of Berkley Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.