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. In a story spanning five decades, Last Night in Twisted River - 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.` 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.