Excerpt from Gator Country by Rebecca Renner, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

That was what Jeff had been there to arrest him for. Not only for poaching but for possessing a firearm while on probation for a felony. Clyde knew it, too. After ridding himself of the offending rifle, he banged on the roof, clearly telling the driver, his girlfriend, to pull over.

While Jeff was talking to them, the landowner rolled in and listened for a bit and then said, "Come to think of it, I did give old Clyde permission to hunt back here."

The landowner and Clyde shared a look.

That night would have to be a catch and release.

It would take more work to bring Clyde in that first time, including some sleuthing to track down how he had come into possession of a rifle. After finding surveillance footage of Clyde's girlfriend buying the gun for him, Jeff informed Clyde's probation officer, who told him to put a warrant out for Clyde's arrest.

That was how their odd sort of relationship started. They were adversaries. That was true. But they weren't enemies.

By the night that long car chase had ensued, Jeff had already arrested Clyde twice and sent him to prison both times. Each time, on their way to the jail, Clyde sitting cuffed in the patrol truck, Jeff would give him what he called his come-to-Jesus talk.

"Why are you doing this to your mom and dad?" Jeff said the second time. "You need to grow the fuck up."

Clyde nodded his head and said, "Buta, you're right."

Despite this seeming sincerity, Jeff's talks never really stuck. Still, Clyde wasn't a bad fellow, Jeff thought. He clung to the idea that even the worst criminals still had a grain of good in them. Most folks who crossed his path in the woods were one-time offenders. He'd try to educate them, make them understand what they had done, that it was more than breaking the law: Out in nature, even a small crime can affect an entire ecosystem. Jeff had decided long ago that he would rather do this and never see that person again than hike up his arrest numbers. Those didn't matter. The people and the animals did.

When Jeff found a man out poaching to feed his family, he remembered what it was like to be poor. He had grown up on Guam in a large family who struggled to make ends meet. What a lot of people don't realize is that in paradise, everything is expensive. What you had then were beautiful views and hard work. Jeff had never poached himself, but he could imagine the line of thought that brought a man to that place. It was one not of evil but of cold necessity. He felt for the people brought to that kind of need. Fines or court dates would just add more weight to their load.

Instead, he'd tell them to pack up, dump their catch, and go. "Just get out of here, man," he would say. "Don't do this again."

To Jeff, helping his fellow man was the moral thing to do. So what if it let them slip through the cracks of the law. Doing the right thing was far more important, and maybe, he thought, doing that one right thing would make them do the right thing later: They would get the opportunity to poach again, but perhaps they would remember Jeff and how he'd let them go, and they would let their quarry go, too.

Then there were times when they didn't. Like with Clyde. People were still people, imperfect. You could still be friendly with a man even if he remained on the wrong side of the law.

Excerpted from Gator Country by Rebecca Renner. Copyright © 2023 by Rebecca Renner. Excerpted by permission of Flatiron Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.