Howard Elman is a man whose internal landscape is as disordered as his front yard, where native New Hampshire birches mingle with a bullet-riddled washer, abandoned bathroom fixtures, and several junk cars.  Howard, anti-hero of this first  novel in Ernest Hebert's highly acclaimed Darby series, is a mixture too.  Howard's battle against encroaching change symbolizes the class conflict between indigenous Granite Staters scratching out a living and citified immigrants with "college degrees and big bank accounts."  Like the winter-weakened deer threatened by the dogs of March--the normally docile house pets whose instincts arouse them to chase and kill for sport--Howard, too is sorely beset.  

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Ernest Hebert, a native of New Hampshire, studied with Wallace Stegner at Stanford University.  He has been an attendant in a mental hospital, a mill worker, a US Army enlisted man, a taxi driver, a telephone-equipment installer, and a gas-station manager.  

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*from the book jacket