Kip, Kira, and Leslie are outliers, even in the metal scene they love. In arch-conservative backwoods Florida in the 1980s, just listening to heavy metal can get you arrested—but the risk is worth taking, because music is what leads them to each other.

Different from one another as they are, the three of them form a family of sorts, one that proves safer and more loving than the broken homes they come from. Together, they make the pilgrimage from Florida's swamp country to L.A.'s fabled Sunset Strip—but the beautiful new life they've dreamed of soon proves a mirage. Kira finds herself drawn to ever darker and more extreme strains of metal, drifting toward a place where her two friends, for all their love, can't follow. On a trip to Europe for her twenty-second birthday, in the middle of a show, she simply vanishes. Years later, the shocking truth about her disappearance reunites Kip and Leslie, whose search for her takes them from California to the snowbound woods of Norway. But bringing Kira home will require a greater sacrifice than either could imagine.

In his most absorbing and ambitious novel yet, John Wray dives deep into the wild funhouse world of heavy metal and death cults in the 1980s and '90s. Gone to the Wolves lays bare the intensity, tumult, and thrill of friendship in adolescence—a time when music can often feel like life or death.