Open Throat

Open Throat is a cinematic confession told by a mountain lion who haunts the trails below the Hollywood sign. She studies hikers, sleeps in thickets, steals water at a pump, and scrounges from a small encampment she quietly considers her town. She’s smart, starved, and full of language she’s absorbed from us—our therapy-speak, our fears, our jokes, our phones—and she’s wrestling with a shudder inside that won’t settle.

Then the hillside shakes and burns. A man with a whip and a lighter sparks a blaze that empties the park and turns her refuge to smoke. Stumbling through scorched streets, the lion slips into Los Angeles—past sprinklers and trimmed hedges, through a zoo’s glass and netting, and finally under the home of a once-famous actor named Slaughter. There she meets his daughter, Jane, who calls her “Heckit,” feeds her, and sits beside her like a believer before a shrine.

The book moves like a chase and a prayer. It tracks hunger, memory, and the strange intimacy between predator and person. It imagines the happiest place on earth and then reminds us of helicopters, cops, and the cost of being seen. It’s about what the city takes, what it gives back, and what a creature will do to guard the one human who truly looked back.

• Listeners who love voice-driven fiction that feels raw, intimate, and fast
• Fans of city novels, animal perspectives, and stories that bend the line between terror and tenderness
• Anyone curious about Los Angeles, wildness, and how language shapes what we fear

Henry Hoke is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in Electric Literature, No Tokens, and other venues. He co-created the Los Angeles performance series Enter>text and has taught at CalArts and the UVA Young Writers Workshop. He’s the author of several previous books and lives in New York City.