The dream of an urban paradise comes true for the Raccoons of a small suburban city when they rise up, throw out their government, and create an ecological commonwealth. Touchwit, Clutch and Bandit are prepared to die for a free, healthy, and diverse city. But to earn their self-respect as citizens they must overcome their father Meatbreath, an autocrat obsessed with multiplying himself in a host of weaponised children. And to join a community of kinship they must find their future mates. Will the three cubs use the powers they have inherited from their father without being claimed by his evil? In this sometimes sentimental, sometimes heroic adventure story full of echoes of current issues and political personalities, Raccoons are the leading experts at survival, engaging the struggle for a better Earth with wonder, joy, and laughter.

Sean Kane writes about weather myths and crisis ecology in oral histories and wondertales of the Pacific and Atlantic Northwest. He is the author of WISDOM OF THE MYTHTELLERS, an exploration of the oral and ecological basis of myth, and of the campus novel VIRTUAL FREEDOM, a finalist for the Leacock Humour Medal. He lives in Peterborough, Ontario.

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Wonderful in the full sense of the word, RACCOON is an extraordinary work of fiction. Alive with incident, madcap excitement, quirky humour, and many poetic turns of phrase, it is at once a satire, a wondertale, and a thoughtful work of ecological commentary.

DON LEPAN, Founder and CEO of Broadview Press and author of three novels, most recently Lucy and Bonbon

This account of a quest for an ideal Commonwealth is in the tradition of some of the finest animal adventure stories ever written. Sean Kane’s clear-eyed, beautifully written tale offers a critique of society as it is and a model of what it could be.

STAN DRAGLAND, C.M., novelist, poet, critic, founding editor of Brick Books, and Emeritus Professor of Canadian and Children’s Literature at Western University

Prepare to be transported. Sean Kane’s RACCOON, like the animals at the heart of his story, is curious, mischievous, lovable, and fierce. A tale that uses the foundations of a children’s fable but builds upon it a fiction for all ages, and decidedly for our time

ANDREW PYPER, bestselling author of The Residence and The Demonologist

RACCOON will be recognized as a classic of its genre. It joins all those currents of thought that see the creative imagination as the ultimate force that can reshape and somehow, some way, redeem the planet

EUGENE BENSON, novelist, literary historian, and playwright. As Professor of English at the University of Guelph, he co-edited the Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English

How can we live without Sean Kane’s inspired madness? His loopy intelligence, and the amplitude of his heart, provide necessary medicine for all creatures working for a collective swerve away from ecological catastrophe and finding themselves wounded by the battle. Kane’s cure-all goes by the name of laughter

DAVID ABRAM, philosopher and social ecologist. Author of The Spell of the Sensuous and Becoming Animal

RACCOON feels real and has bite. It has Sean Kane’s — but how does he do it? — grasp of where the imaginative and real meet. Everything in his story sparkles with that and because of that.

GORDON TESKEY, Francis Lee Higginson Professor of English Literature, Harvard University