Our Last Wild Days

A Novel

LIST PRICE $19.00

About The Book

From the author of the “irresistible” (Paula Hawkins, #1 New York Times bestselling author) Where the Truth Lies, an atmospheric novel about a young woman who searches for answers after her estranged friend is found dead in the bayou of their rural Louisiana hometown.

The Labasques aren’t like other families.

Living in a shack out in the swamps, they made do by hunting down alligators and other animals. To the good people of Jacknife, Louisiana, they are troublemakers and outcasts, the kind of people you wouldn’t want in your community.

So, when Cutter Labasque is found face down in the muddy swamp, no one seems to care, not even her two brothers. The only person who questions the official verdict of suicide is Cutter’s childhood friend, Loyal May, who has just returned home to care for her mother. When she left town at eighteen years old, she betrayed Cutter. Now with a ragtag group from the local paper where she works, Loyal goes in search of answers, uncovering a web of deceit and corruption that implicates those in town. It may be too late to apologize to Cutter, but Loyal has restitution in mind.

Weaving through the swamps and bayous of rural Louisiana, Our Last Wild Days is an atmospheric, smoldering suspense about our darker impulses—and how to set things right.

About The Author

Photograph by Robin Christian

Anna Bailey is a Sunday Times (London) bestselling author from Gloucestershire. Their debut novel, Tall Bones (published in the US as Where the Truth Lies), inspired by their experiences living in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, was nominated for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year and Goldsboro Books Glass Bell awards, as well as the Prix Nouvelles Voix du Polar. Their short stories, based on their travels through rural America, have been dramatised for BBC Radio 4, including “Long Way to Come for a Sip of Water”, which was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. They live in Bordeaux with their wife.

Why We Love It

“Anna Bailey’s Where the Truth Lies was my favorite debut novel of 2020 (even if I hadn’t edited it!). Their supreme talent was evident on the page with sentences that I wanted to remain wrapped up for hours. They bring that same lyrical voice, eye for observation, and small-town setting to Our Last Wild Days. Set in Louisiana, this kaleidoscopic novel about a small-town in the wake of a woman’s untimely death brings to mind the gritty, Southern setting of Blacktop Wasteland, the fully realized characters and slow burn suspense of Then We Came to the End, and the darkness of Night Will Find You.”

—Kaitlin O., Executive Editor, on Our Last Wild Days

Product Details

  • Publisher: Atria Books (August 18, 2026)
  • Length: 352 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781982157203

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