The Short Happy Life of Cob Logan

“This, of course, would be his curse. But what more could be expected from a child born in an isolation cell: for Cob Logan, the allure of what might be would always prove stronger than the allure of what was.”

Cob Logan’s first touch in the world is the concrete floor of the penitentiary where his mother has been imprisoned for a failed attempt at castrating her husband. Cob is eventually adopted and raised by a social worker and a furniture maker in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, and befriended by Maxmillion Orthler, a famous novelist whose reclusiveness and literary dormancy have only served to fuel his mythological status. Cob’s addiction to “what might be” takes shape in his search for a mate, his dreams of literary greatness, and his drive to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, a mountaineer famed for his pursuit of a fabled peak and the heroic death he suffered high in the Himalayas. But Cob’s world is balanced precariously on the edge of comic absurdity and heart-stopping tragedy, and he’s destined to cross paths with a few obstacles along the way, including a band of paintball terrorists, a one-legged seductress, a politician who suffers a career-ending attack by an aroused elk, and his biological mother, whose epistolary rants from prison unwittingly raise her to the status of cult hero.