In This Iron Ground

by Marina Vivancos

Damien is nine years old when his parents die. He goes into foster care, seven jumps and seven houses and seven families by the time he’s thirteen. He learns what words like ‘exhausting’ and ‘I can’t do this anymore’ really mean.

Then, he’s taken in by the McKenzies.

The McKenzies can see there’s something wrong with him. They try to fix him, but Damien isn’t sure if it’s making him better. All he knows is that he feels worse.

People say that that the moon has a call that even people can feel. In the wash of their blood and tide of their soul, they can hear it calling. Maybe that’s what makes Damien run through the forest on a full moon night, trying to escape what awaits him at the McKenzies. He wants to lose himself in the green and the silver, disappear into the black. Instead, he’s found.

The Salgado family have been part of the town for as long as anybody can remember. Their Native American roots are anchored deep into the ground, and Damien has seen the Salgado children in his school. Koko, who is in his class, and Hakan, two years older and infinitely unreachable. Damien is too much of a loser to ever have anything to do with either of them, until that full moon night reveals that the Salgados are not only a family. They are a pack.

Damien is suddenly introduced into a world that had only ever existed in his imagination, where there is magic in the forest and the moon, in the earth under his feet. He meets creatures that look like monsters, but Damien knows what monsters look like. They have the same face as anybody else.

The Salgados welcome Damien in a way he never would have expected. Damien and Hakan grow closer, first into friendship, and then into something heated and breathless as they end up in the same university together. But, Damien knows, deep down in that bruised and mealy part of his core, that he’s not good enough to be part of their family. He’s not worthy of calling Hakan his home.

Damien is used to losing things, but he’ll hold onto this for as long as he can.

CONTENT WARNING: This book contains themes of (non-sexual, mostly emotional) child abuse and the subsequent emotional, cognitive and behavioural impact on said child. However, at its core, this book is about recovery through found family and love. 

This story contains several sexually explicit scenes between consenting adults and therefore is meant for an adult audience.

And the moment you’ve been waiting for! The In This Iron Ground cover reveal… Continue reading →