If It Bleeds

Drew Larson is a writer who has published a number of short stories in various magazines, most notably The New Yorker. He has made three attempts to write a novel in the past, though all have failed. On one occasion, he nearly burned his house down while trying to destroy the manuscript.

While walking to a deli, Drew gets the idea to write a western novel. He envisions a young man holding a girl hostage in a saloon out of jealousy. He quickly imagines the other characters, including a sheriff with a limp and the young man’s wealthy, protective father. Drew shares the idea with his wife, Lucy, when he gets home. He wants to write the book at his father’s cabin in TR-90, which hasn’t been rented out since the death of its caretaker, Old Bill Colson. Lucy is concerned about the psychological effect that another novel attempt might have on Drew, but Drew assures her that the ideas are so clear that it will feel like “taking dictation.” He needs to work from the cabin to get a head start on the writing.

Drew visits his mentor, Al Stamper, who has recently stepped down from teaching after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. When Drew shares his plan to write a new novel, Al advises him to be satisfied with his career as a short story writer. Drew insists that the idea is good enough to justify another attempt at a novel. Al asks him to explain why he is so driven to pursue this project.

Drew later tells Lucy that he thinks it may be his last chance to write a novel. He is driven not by the need to publish, but by the need to finish a book. She asks him to wait one week to be sure that the idea is worth pursuing. During that week, his vision for the novel expands, allowing him to conceptualize the milieu that populate the fictional town of Bitter River, Wyoming.

Drew leaves at the end of the week. Lucy cautions him to take care because it will be difficult to reach out with poor cellphone coverage in the area. She asks him to call her every day on the cabin landline. If he doesn’t, she’ll come for him herself. Drew is about to leave when Lucy reminds him to bring paper to print his pages on.

On the road, Drew feels his real life slipping behind him. His mind inhabits the events at Bitter River, where the lawmen must protect the young man from an angry mob that wants to take revenge on him for killing his hostage. He reaches the street that leads to the cabin, Shithouse Road. Drew visits the only store in TR-90, which is run by a sick man named Roy DeWitt. Roy recognizes Drew as the son of Buzzy Larson. Drew learns that the caretaker, Old Bill, died by suicide at the cabin. When Drew hears the details of how Old Bill died, he thinks about how some of them might fit into the story he is writing.

Drew reaches the cabin and is mildly haunted by the thought of Old Bill’s death. A moose calf passes by, followed by its mother. The mother briefly sees Drew as a threat before walking to her calf to protect it. They soon leave.

Drew settles into the cabin, which is poorly maintained in Old Bill’s absence. He checks the answering machine, which has a message from Lucy telling him to call. He promptly reports his arrival, then says goodbye so he can continue settling in. After dinner that night, Drew begins to feel the pressure of writing creeping up on him. Drew finds a crate of old toys near the fireplace. He reports it to Lucy, who recalls that apart from the toys their children must have left behind, some of the toys may belong to a family they once rented the cabin out to.

The following morning, Drew sets up a routine as part of his creative process. He walks down to the brook, then returns to the cabin to make coffee. He starts writing the first draft of Bitter River and is unable to break from it for several hours. He continues this routine for three days. On the fourth day, Drew wakes up with a cold. He goes to Roy’s store to buy food and supplies. Unable to buy NyQuil, he settles for off-brand cough medicine. The store is being run by Roy’s daughter, who tells him Roy is in the hospital recovering from pneumonia. She warns Drew about an oncoming storm that weekend, advising him to leave if he doesn’t want to get stranded on Shithouse Road.

Drew refuses to leave his father’s cabin now that his writing has been going so well. He gets into a fight with Lucy, who urges him to return home. She wants him to be with the family in case anything happens to them during the storm. Drew stresses his need to finish the novel to make his life feel complete. Lucy frames that need as a choice he is making over the safety of his family. She notices that Drew is getting sick.

Drew takes the off-brand cough medicine, a quarter of which turns out to be alcohol. He tries to focus on recovery but remains sick the following morning. He manages to write, but not as much as the previous days. He breaks his afternoon routine to watch the weather report, which guarantees an intense storm. Lucy tells Drew to come home, but Drew refuses.

Drew gets stuck working through a scene where the sheriff tries to sneak the young man out of town. He soon worries that he is falling into the same pattern that caused his last novel attempt to fail. He resents Roy DeWitt for getting him sick. As he struggles to get back into a stable rhythm, he takes more medicine, then goes to sleep. When he wakes up, the storm has begun.

Drew calls Lucy and admits that he was wrong. He regrets not leaving sooner and is now faced with the task of remaining in the cabin throughout the storm. The power goes out, so he goes looking for a lantern in the shed. He brings it back into the cabin and, after lighting it, decides to light the woodstove as well. He briefly considers burning the pages he’s written. He consoles himself with the thought that the pages are good and that he will survive the storm.

Trees fall outside the cabin. Drew goes to check if any of them have hit his car and learns that it has been spared. When he closes the door, he hears a scratching noise outside. He checks again and sees a rat struggling to survive on his doorstep. He realizes the rat came from the equipment shed, which must’ve been destroyed by a falling tree. Out of pity, he takes the rat inside and places it near the stove to warm it up.

Drew goes to sleep but is startled awake by a falling tree branch. To his surprise, the rat has survived and is speaking to him. The rat comments on the nature of writing, and Drew recognizes the rat’s speech as a craft lecture once delivered by American novelist Jonathan Franzen. The rat makes an offer to Drew in return for saving him. He promises that Drew will finish his book on the condition that Drew name someone he cares for. That person must die as part of their deal. Drew is hesitant to pick anyone from his family, so the rat suggests choosing Al Stamper. Drew agrees since Al is dying of pancreatic cancer anyway. The rat does not make any promises other than the guarantee that Drew will finish writing his book. He asks Drew for food to secure their deal. Drew lets him eat a discarded oyster cracker. The rat leaves, and Drew falls asleep again.

The next morning, Drew starts to feel better. He returns to the fireplace and sees that the toybox has been turned over, revealing a stuffed rat among its contents. He theorizes that his encounter with the talking rat was a fever dream of the stuffed toy. He returns to writing and is satisfied with his pages. Drew works through the remainder of the storm, only stopping when the skies clear and he hears the sound of a chainsaw outside. He recognizes the man with the chainsaw as Jackie, Old Bill Colson’s son. Jackie had been called by his mother, who had been alerted to Drew’s presence by Lucy. Drew learns that Roy DeWitt has died of pneumonia.

Jackie brings Drew to Roy’s store so that he can call Lucy from the payphone. They reconcile as Drew reports that the writing is going well. He gets home later that night. Drew asks about Al Stamper. Lucy had heard from Al’s wife, Nadine, that he is okay. Drew returns to work, then calls Al to check in with him. Al is impressed with Drew’s output, then tells him he has to deal with a rat. Drew initially panics upon hearing this, but soon realizes that Al had said “rash,” not “rat.”

Drew reaches the end of his novel, which sees the young man facing execution with grace, though the tragedy is that he will never get to grow old. The sheriff retires and leaves for the coast. The young man’s father is about to die by suicide when he sees the sheriff and considers shooting him instead.

Lucy reads the manuscript and is deeply impressed. She vindicates Drew’s decision to stay in the cabin and write through the storm. She admits that Drew was “rat,” but Drew realizes he has misheard her saying “right.” Al reads the manuscript and is moderately impressed. Al seems to be recovering as well as he reaches the end of his chemotherapy treatment. Drew mishears him saying “rat now” instead of “right now.”

Drew’s literary agent reads the manuscript and is thrilled by its quality. She succeeds in organizing an auction, which Putnam wins for an advance of $350,000. Drew and Lucy briefly celebrate before learning that Al and Nadine Stamper have died in a fatal car accident. Guilty, Drew resolves to never write another book again.

Drew attends the Stampers’ joint funeral and declines to speak when invited by Al’s brother. A few months later, Drew works on the copyedited manuscript of Bitter River while Lucy takes the kids to Rhode Island. When he tells Lucy that he plans to revisit his father’s cabin, Lucy suggests staying a little longer to work on something new. Drew dismisses the idea, going so far as to suggest selling the cabin. He drives up to TR-90 and offers his condolences to Roy’s daughter when he stops by the store.

The cabin has been largely restored by Old Bill’s widow. Drew tries calling out for the rat, but the rat doesn’t come. Drew retrieves the stuffed rat from the toybox and confronts it in lieu of the talking rat. He sets it on fire and throws the remains in the brook. He wrestles with the question of whether or not his ambition to write a novel really cost his friends their lives.

That night, the rat revisits Drew. Drew criticizes the rat for killing Nadine. The rat points out that there was never any specification as to how Al would die, which meant that Nadine was fair game since she happened to be in the car with Al when it killed him. Drew indicates that he never wants to write another novel again, but the rat is unsympathetic. Drew remarks that the rat has done him more harm than good. The rat retorts by pointing out that Drew always knew it was a rat. Drew tries to catch the rat, but it escapes, taunting that it finished the book for Drew.

Drew tries to convince himself that his encounters with the rat were dreams and that he did not cause the Stampers’ deaths. He returns home and tries to resign himself to the life he still has. The novella ends by stating: “Really, when you thought about it, everything was all rat” (455).