The Summer Raptor Ward
A Novel

About this book:

The scent of pine, bleach, and raw meat hangs thick in the canyon air at High Country Raptor Rehabilitation, where two summer residents have arrived with the same singular goal: the one recommendation letter from Dr. Aris Thorne that guarantees a future in veterinary school. Maeve brings custom-forged gauntlets, field-grit, and a chip on her shoulder; Julian arrives in a polished SUV with a color-coded medical kit and a strategy for every interaction. Between them stand twenty-six chapters of talon-punctures, midnight feedings, flight-pen tests, and the relentless, unglamorous work of convincing wild predators to survive—while neither can afford a single mistake.

This isn't a romance between rivals, nor a tidy redemption arc. It's a clinic procedural written with the precision of a scalpel: the mechanics of coping a beak, the physics of a thermal updraft, the psychology of a bird that would rather die than accept help. Thorne demands stillness, spatial awareness, and the humility to scrub algae from water pans before you earn the right to bandage a fractured coracoid. As the summer heat cracks the canyon and the caseload escalates—bumblefoot, imprint kestrels, a golden eagle with secrets—Maeve and Julian are forced into a truce that feels like betrayal, learning that competence isn't measured in textbooks but in the moment a five-pound carnivore decides whether you're a threat or a perch.

*The Summer Raptor Ward* delivers the rare satisfaction of watching professionals at the edge of their limits, where every chapter tightens the knot between ambition and ethics. For readers who crave the tactile intelligence of *The Bear* or the institutional pressure of *The Resident*, this novel offers a world where the hierarchy is feathered, the stakes are measured in grams of weight gain, and the only way out is through the open cage door.