August is a twelve-year-old boy whose parents have split up while living on the same isolated farm property. His father has taken up with a young woman, barely older than August himself, who works as a hired hand while his mother has taken up the “breatharianism” that gives the story its title and is somehow a real thing:

“I made lunch, and it smelled so good while it was cooking, but then I found myself suddenly not hungry. I don’t know, I may have finally broken through.”

August pulled out a chair and sat across from his mother at the small table. “Broken through to what?” he said.

“Oh, I didn’t tell you? I’ve been devoting myself to a new teaching.” She stubbed out the cigarillo and shook another from the pack sitting on the table, a fine network of lines appearing around her mouth as she pursed her lips to light it. Her nails were long and gray, her fingertips jaundiced with tobacco stain. “Yeah,” she continued, “I’ve become an inediate.”

“A what?”

“An inediate—you know, a breatharian?”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Air eaters? Sky swallowers? Ether ingesters?”

“Nope.”

“You can attune your mind and your body, Augie. Perfectly attune them by healthy living and meditation, so that you completely lose the food requirement. I mean, it’s not just that you’re not hungry. That’s not too hard. I’m talking about getting to the point where all you have to do is breathe the air and you’re satisfied. You get full and you never have to eat. And you can survive that way, happy as a clam.” She took a sip of coffee, smoke dribbling from her nose after she swallowed. “That’s what I’ve been working on.”

The dog August’s father bought when he was born and raised along with the boy has recently died and, as a result, the farm has developed a problem:

There were cats in the barn. Litters begetting litters begetting litters—some thin or misshapen with the afflictions of blood too many times remixed.

“Get rid of the damn things,” August’s father said. “The haymow smells like piss. Take a tire iron or a shovel or whatever tool suits you. You’ve been after me for school money? I’ll give you a dollar a tail. You have your jackknife sharp? You take their tails and pound them to a board, and then after a few days we’ll have a settling up. Small tails worth as much as large tails, it’s all the same.”

The cats—calicos, tabbies, dirty white, gray, jet black, and tawny—sat among the hay bales scratching and yawning like indolent apes inhabiting the remains of a ruined temple. August had never actually killed a cat before, but, like most farm boys, he had engaged in plenty of casual acts of torture. Cats, as a species, retained a feral edge, and as a result were not subject to the rules of husbandry that governed man’s relation with horses or cows or dogs. August figured that somewhere along the line cats had struck a bargain—they knew they could expect to feel a man’s boot if they came too close; in return, they kept their freedom and nothing much was expected of them.

A dollar a tail. August thought of the severed appendages, pressed and dried, stacking up like currency in the teller drawer of some strange Martian bank. He could earn fifty dollars at least, maybe seventy-five, possibly even a hundred if he was able to track down the newborn litters.

As August displaces his feelings of betrayal by the adults in his life and sense of loss at the passing of his dog into his cat-klling mission, the body count rises. It’s a story children of divorce, in particular, will identify with and, because of his circumstances and reaction, it’s kind of terrifying. It’s a darn good rural gothic.

(Reviewed:04-Mar-25)

Grade: (B+) Orrin C. Judd

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Callan Wink Links:

    -AUTHOR SITE: CallanWink.com
    -AUTHOR PAGE: Callan Wink (Penguin Random House)
    -ENTRY: Callan Wink 2014 Prose (NEA Fellows)
    -ENTRY: Callan Wink (Good Reads)
    -ENTRY: Callan Wink (Bookreporter)
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    -INDEX: Callan Wink (Outside Bozeman)
    -INDEX: Callan Wink (Lit Hub)
    -INDEX: Callan Wink (Granta)
    -INDEX: Callan Wink (MuckRack)
    -INDEX: Callan Wink (Men’s Journal)
    -INDEX: Callan Wink (Anglers Journal)
    -VIDEO INDEX: Callan Wink (YouTube)
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    -AUDIO STORY: Callan Wink Reads "A Refugee Crisis" (The Writer's Voice: New Fiction from The New Yorker, 8/14/18)
    -STORY: A Refugee Crisis (Callan Wink, Aug. 13th, 2018, The New Yorker)
    -STORY: In Hindsight (Callan Wink, November 20, 2015, The New Yorker)
    -STORY: Breatharians (Callan Wink, 10/22/12, The New Yorker)
    -EXCERPT: from August (Callan Wink, Granta)
    -ESSAY: Fly-Fishing with Jim Harrison A Montana river guide (and aspiring novelist) is a pro at taking corporate execs to the big trout – but meets his match when two outlaw literary legends land in his boat. (Callan Wink, Dec 4, 2017, Men’s Journal)
    -TRIBUTE: Jim Harrison's Fly-Fishing Guide Remembers His Favorite Client: Most people knew Jim Harrison from his books. Callan Wink, however, took him fishing. (Callan Wink, Dec 4, 2017, Men’s Journal)
    -ESSAY: The Day the Yellowstone Died: A fishing guide grapples with the closure of 183 miles of one of the West's most famous rivers. (Callan Wink, Dec 4, 2017, Men’s Journal)
    -INTERVIEW: Writer Thomas McGuane on the Wild West: A new story collection affirms why Montana writer Thomas McGuane is still one of the greatest chroniclers of the West ?and beyond. (Callan Wink, Mar 6, 2018, Men’s Journal)
    -ESSAY: Betrayal (Granta)
    -STORY: One More Last Stand: ‘It’s funny to think that we existed, us together, before either of our marriages.’ (Callan Wink, 2/04/13, Granta)
    -STORY: Exotics: ‘He’d come to tell her that he was leaving. It seemed rather impossible now – the telling, not the leaving.’ (Callan Wink, 8/07/14, Granta)
    -ESSAY: Places I Know and Love: A Guest Post by Callan Wink (Callan Wink / February 12, 2025, B&N Reads)
    -ESSAY: 10 Best Books Set in the American West (Callan Wink | Jan 29, 2016, Publishers Weekly)
    -VIDEO STORY: Matt Rives reads Callan Wink's story "Crow Country Moses" at Stories on Stage Davis. (Saturday, February 11, 2017, at the Pence Gallery in Davis, CA)
    -ESSAY: On location with Callan Wink (Callan Wink, February 10, 2016, Ecotone)
    -ESSAY: What Did I Do Wrong? (Callan Wink, Fall 2016, Outside Bozeman)
    -POEM: On Waking up to Realize You're Living the Dream (Callan Wink, Summer 2009, Outside Bozeman)
    -ESSAY: A Change in the Weather (Callan Wink, Winter 2008-09, Outside Bozeman)
    -ESSAY: Bright-Eyed and Bushy-Tailed (Callan Wink, Summer 2006, Outside Bozeman)
    -ESSAY: Warming Trend (Callan Wink, Winter 2005-06, Outside Bozeman)
    -ESSAY: Plying the Currents: A driftboat guide reflects on the origins of a beautiful pursuit (Callan Wink, Oct 16, 2023, Anglers Journal)
    -ESSAY: Art of the Skunk: We all come up empty on occasion but getting blanked is more nuanced if you're a guide. (Callan Wink, Aug 1, 2022, Anglers Journal)
    -ESSAY: Guide Types: The ever-changing crop of newcomers to the guiding trade can be grouped into several categories (Callan Wink, Sep 30, 2021, Anglers Journal)
    -ESSAY: A Conversation with Thomas McGuane: The writer reflects on fishing, the old days and his work. (Callan Wink, Jul 24, 2018, Anglers Journal)
    -ESSAY: Fish Pimping: A seasoned guide reflects on the contradictions of the trade (Callan Wink, Jan 9, 2019, Anglers Journal)
    -ESSAY: A Head Start: Whether we’re running away from one thing or toward another, it’s hard to shake the people and objects that have given our lives meaning (Callan Wink, Dec 23, 2019, Anglers Journal)

The first was a No. 8 Wagner cast iron skillet that I’d used to fry bacon and eggs and trout and elk in campfires across the Rocky Mountain West for 15 years. I bought that pan already well-used at thrift store in Missoula, Montana, the summer I turned 20. Until that point, I’d never been anywhere, or done anything, but somehow I’d finally gotten up the momentum to break through the surface tension of my crappy Michigan hometown.

It was early May, and I had lined up a job guiding anglers at a dude ranch on the Blackfoot River. I’d driven straight through from Michigan in one 24-hour shot. I was riding high on some mix of panic, elation and guilt, if I’m being honest. Freedom has different components for different people, and maybe it’s just part of my makeup as a Midwesterner, but for me, guilt will always be a part of it.

The previous summer, my mother — a healthy woman, a runner, a non-drinker, a non-smoker in her early 50s — suffered a stroke. She essentially died on the operating table, where she was, for better or worse, resuscitated. I was working construction with my dad at that point, and at 4 o’clock every day we’d leave the jobsite and go to the ICU. Her face was yellow and bloated, and my father would hold her hand and speak to her, although there was no way of knowing if she could hear or understand.

I’d walk the halls or doze in a chair in the waiting room, still in my stinking work clothes, trying not to make eye contact with other people similarly blasted out of their realities. I was quickly coming to the conclusion that life is short, and within your allotted span there are things that can happen to you that are worse than death. My mother lived another 10 years, severely mentally and physically handicapped, my father her only caregiver.

That day in May I rolled into Missoula, haggard and red-eyed. Even in town I could smell the snow still hanging deep in the mountains. I bought that Wagner, a pound of Daily’s peppered bacon, an avocado and a loaf of Wheat Montana white bread. I drove way up Rock Creek, and right before dark I caught two nice brown trout, both bigger than 90 percent of my best Michigan fish. I made a fire, fried that mess of bacon, built a BLT about 3 inches thick and ate it in the firelight, my whole summer spread out in front of me, my old life a thousand miles back there in some indistinct place on the other side of the Mississippi.

    -ESSAY: Drink Like a Fish, Fish Like a Man: It’s no secret that fishing and drinking go hand in hand, and in Livingston, Montana, that means saddling up to the Murray Bar (Callan Wink, Jan 9, 2018, Anglers Journal)
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    -VIDEO: Callan Wink discusses Beartooth (The Poisoned Pen Bookstore, 2/26/25)
    -VIDEO: Callan Wink on Dog Run Moon: Stories (Shakespeare and Company Bookshop, Nov 16, 2017)
    -VIDEO: Callan Wink @ The American Library in Paris (AmericanLibraryParis, 14 November 2017)
    -VIDEO: "Big Sky Country" - Eine Lesung mit Callan Wink / Book Presentation with Callan Wink (AMERIKAHAUS MÜNCHEN, Nov 4, 2021)
    -VIDEO: April Ayers Lawson & Callan Wink in conversation with Danny Denton (Munster Literature Centre, Jul 23, 2018)
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    -PODCAST: Author Callan Wink: As a full-time guide who writes novels in the offseason, Callan Wink has carved out a unique existence for himself. (Dan Lahren, 2/04/25, Anglers Journal Podcast)
    -PODCAST: 'August': Callan Wink’s Complex Coming-Of-Age Novel (Texas Public Radio: Book Public, August 28, 2020)
    -AUDIO: Callan Wink: More Than A One-Trick Pony (Sarah Aronson, August 9, 2018,Montana Public Radio)
    -PODCAST: “There’s no end, really, or beginning to anything”: Callan Wink’s ‘Beartooth’ is a novel of grief, family, and the wild (Lauren Korn, January 23, 2025, Montana Public Radio: The Write Question)
    -PODCAST: Callan Wink (Thoughts from a Page)
    -PODCAST: Callan Wink – A New Voice for the New West (Ed Roberson, Mountain & Prairie)
    -PODCAST: Callan Wink Interview Episode 510 (The Curious Man, Feb 12, 2025)
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    -INTERVIEW: This Week in Fiction: Callan Wink (Cressida Leyshon, Oct. 14th, 2012, The New Yorker)
    -INTERVIEW: Callan Wink’s music playlist for his novel Beartooth: “I always listen to music when I write. My gears turn slowly enough as it is, the thought of spending two hours staring at a blank screen, in silence, is too painful to consider.” (largeheartedboy, February 14, 2025)
    -INTERVIEW: Interview: Callan Wink Author of Dog Run Moon: Short Stories (Shelf Media, July 26, 2016)
    -PROFILE: Callan Wink (Joe M. O'Connell, Feb. 4, 2016, Kirkus)
    -PROFILE: Callan Wink: Literary angler (Doug Hare, 1/31/18, Explore Big Sky)
    -INTERVIEW: Interview with Callan Wink, author of Dog Run Moon (American Public Library in Paris)
    -INTERVIEW: CUTBANK INTERVIEWS: Callan Wink: Talking shop with Callan Wink (Nicole Rose Gomez, 2/03, 19, Cutbank)
    -PROFILE: Callan Wink Is Yellowstone Country’s Latest Bard (Gregory McNamee, Jan. 29, 2025, Lirlus)
    -INTERVIEW: An Interview with Callan Wink (Epiphany)
    -INTERVIEW: A Conversation With Callan Wink on Writing and Selling Personal Essays (Killer Writers): Clay Stafford has a conversation with author Callan Wink on writing and selling personal essays, including how he approaches opening sentences, the importance of a specific focus for his personal essays, handling the submission process, and more. (Clay Stafford, Dec 1, 2024, Writer’s Digest)
    -AUDIO INTERVIEW: In 'Beartooth,' author Callan Wink mines Yellowstone knowledge (Peter O’Dowd, 2/11/25, WBUR: Here & Now)
    -ESSAY: Callan Wink (Prairie Mary, 1/31/16)
    -ESSAY: The Top 5 Dogs of Callan Wink’s Stories (Jacqueline Brennan, 6/08/18, Cutbank)
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    -REVIEW INDEX: Callan Wink (Publishers Weekly)
    -REVIEW INDEX: Callan Wing (Kirkus)
    -REVIEW: of Beartooth by Callan Wink (Ian McGuire, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of Beartooth (Chris Hewitt, The Minnesota Star Tribune)
    -REVIEW: of Beartooth (Entertainment)
    -REVIEW: of Beartooth (Kirkus)
    -REVIEW: of Beartooth (Publishers Weekly)
    -REVIEW: of Beartooth (BookMarks)
    -REVIEW: of Beartooth (Susie Mesure, The Spectator)
    -REVIEW: of Beartooth (David Hayden, The Guardian)
    -REVIEW: of Beartooth (Neal Hegarty, Irish Times)
    -REVIEW: of Beartooth (A Refuge from Life)
    -REVIEW: of Beartooth (Bookreporter)
    -REVIEW: of Beartooth (The Bookish Elf)
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    -REVIEW: of August by Callan Wink (Christopher Shrimpton, The Guardian)
    -REVIEW: of August (Melanie White, Literary Review)
    -REVIEW: of August (Austin Considine, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of August (Publishers Weekly)
    -REVIEW: of August (James Walton, Times uk)
    -REVIEW: of August (John Sloan)
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    -REVIEW: of Dog Run Moon: Stories by Callan Wink (Erik Martiny, The London Magazine)
    -REVIEW: of Dog Run Moon (Ruth Joffre, Colorado Review)
    -REVIEW: of Dog Run Moon (Rebecca Foster, BookBrowse)
    -REVIEW: of Dog Run Moon (Kirkus)
    -REVIEW: of Dog Run Moon (Publishers Weekly)
    -REVIEW: of Dog Run Moon (Dwight Garner, NY Times)
    -REVIEW: of Dog Run Moon (Imogen Lycett, Daily Mail,
    -REVIEW: of Dog Run Moon (Erin Vanderhoof. The Nation)
    -REVIEW: of Dog Run Moon (John Sloan)
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of Callan Wink’s “One More Last Stand” was first published in Granta 122: Betrayal. (Mookes and Gripes)
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of A Refugee Crisis by Callan Wink (Mookse & Gripes)
    -REVIEW: of Callan Wink: “Dog Run Moon” from The New Yorker, 9/26/11 (Karen Carlson, A Just Recompense)
    -REVIEW: of Dog Run Moon (Clifford Garstang)
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of Callan Wink–“Breatharians” (New Yorker, October 22, 2012) (Paul Debraski, I just read about that)
    -REVIEW: of Breatharians (Great Writers Steal)
    -REVIEW: of Breatharians (Mookes and Gripes)
    -REVIEW: of The Breatharians ( Karen Carlson, A Just Recompense)
    -REVIEW: of Breatharians (Aaron Riccio, Fail Better)
    -REVIEW: of Breatharians (Clifford Garstang)
    -REVIEW: of Breatharians (New Yorker Story Critiques)
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    -READING GUIDE: Breatharians (Writing Atlas)

FILM:
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    -FILM SITE: Breatherians (Big Beach)
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