Hides is a novel of family and politics that distinguishes itself through its careful intermingling of seriousness and comedy, and its surreal but eerily plausible setting.

As wildfires rage across the country and another federal election looms, four friends convene for a wilderness hunting trip in northwestern Newfoundland to commemorate the death of one of their sons, killed in a mass shooting in Calgary the year before. Hides traces the emotional ruptures following this violent, untimely death, along with the tensions of old friendships and father-son relationships marred by loss, betrayal, and a pervasive political and environmental disenchantment.

Rod Moody-Corbett is an award-winning writer from Newfoundland. His writing has appeared in Socrates on the Beach, The Drift, The Paris Review Daily, and Fiddlehead, among other publications. He is the recipient of the 2022 Howard O’Hagan Award for Short Story, a Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Award for Short Fiction, the University of Calgary’s Kaleidoscope Prize, and the CBC Canada Writes Short Story Prize (People’s Choice Award). He serves as a contributing editor for Canadian Notes and Queries.

Rod Moody-Corbett's profile page

“Guns and grief haunt this debut novel, linking a shooting on a Calgary train and a hunting trip for caribou at a strange castle in Newfoundland. The book is about grief and loss, yet is oddly funny, the razor-sharp prose like some outport lovechild of DeLillo and Nabokov. Hides is a little creepy and very impressive.”

Mark Anthony Jarman, author of Burn Man: Selected Stories

"Hides is raucous, tender, sly, and as rich and deep as a forest. Helmed by an unforgettable protagonist who knows so much (while hilariously understanding so little), I was gripped from the first page by the unexpected gentleness in this artful and funny novel, and moved by its unexpected turns on grief, and the bonds of family and friendship. An unforgettable work by a superb writer."

Suzette Mayr, author of the Giller Prize-winning The Sleeping Car Porter

"On the edge of a failing world, four characters come together to see what remains, and what can be salvaged. Rod Moody-Corbett has written a book that seems to simultaneously inhabit our present and our future. The writing in Hides seethes and crackles with energy—tough, heartfelt, funny, and sarcastic in all the necessary places."

Tamas Dobozy, author of Seige 13 and Stasio