What do you think?
Rate this book
Endangered Animals
This story was originally published in Day One, a weekly literary journal dedicated to short fiction and poetry from emerging writers.
Since his divorce, Peter hardly ever sees his daughter, Marcy. So when his boss offers up his cabin for a dad-kid weekend in the woods, outdoor-product-designing desk-jockey Peter decides to buck his routine and accepts. Like her dad, Marcy isn’t very outgoing when it comes to the outdoors—or other people—and the woods and other campers only intensify the fear she lives with on a daily basis. In an attempt to manage her anxiety, she goes on a mission to find otters that soon borders on obsession, while Peter furtively hides in his work despite his promise not to do so. As the number of animals increases around them, and the other families leave the lake, Marcy and Peter are faced with each other, and themselves, as they never have been before. Told through the eyes of both the parent and the child, Endangered Animals sheds light on the hidden places where our fears can intersect regardless of age and how easily our grasp on the world can falter.
Since his divorce, Peter hardly ever sees his daughter, Marcy. So when his boss offers up his cabin for a dad-kid weekend in the woods, outdoor-product-designing desk-jockey Peter decides to buck his routine and accepts. Like her dad, Marcy isn’t very outgoing when it comes to the outdoors—or other people—and the woods and other campers only intensify the fear she lives with on a daily basis. In an attempt to manage her anxiety, she goes on a mission to find otters that soon borders on obsession, while Peter furtively hides in his work despite his promise not to do so. As the number of animals increases around them, and the other families leave the lake, Marcy and Peter are faced with each other, and themselves, as they never have been before. Told through the eyes of both the parent and the child, Endangered Animals sheds light on the hidden places where our fears can intersect regardless of age and how easily our grasp on the world can falter.
- GenresShort Stories
18 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 1, 2014
2 people are currently reading
28 people want to read
About the author
Maxim Loskutoff
6 books111 followersTwo-time winner of the High Plains Book Award, Maxim Loskutoff is the author of the novels OLD KING and RUTHIE FEAR and the story collection COME WEST AND SEE. His stories and essays have appeared in numerous periodicals, including the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Ploughshares, and GQ. Other honors include the Nelson Algren Award and the Montana Innovation Award. A Yaddo and MacDowell fellow, he lives in the Rocky Mountains of western Montana where he was raised.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 24, 2025
I’ve got another of Maxim Loskutoff’s books on my TBR, and while waiting on a library hold for something else, I spotted Endangered Animals on Kindle Unlimited. At just under thirty pages, it felt like a good chance to sample his writing. I’m glad I did. There are a couple of other short works by him I’d be curious about too, if only they weren’t in Italian. I’d check them out if I could read and write Italian!
This short story follows Peter, a recently divorced father, as he takes his daughter Marcy on a weekend trip to the woods. What is meant to be quality time turns into something quieter and harder to define. Marcy becomes fixated on spotting otters, while Peter stays emotionally adrift, torn between work distractions and his own discomfort. The story reads like a meditation on miscommunication and quiet grief. Nature becomes the third character, quietly reflecting what neither father nor daughter can bring themselves to say.
What struck me most was how alike Peter and Marcy are. He clearly wants her to open up, to engage more, to be different from him, but she isn’t. She mirrors his same hesitancy and anxious withdrawal, and that unsettles him. At the same time, their key difference lies in how they respond to the natural world. Marcy seems able to accept nature as it is, uncontrolled, unknowable, and fascinating. Peter, on the other hand, seems less aware of it. He’s physically present but emotionally removed, still expecting something from the environment and from her that they are not built to provide.
Even the wilderness around them seems to resist shaping itself into something easy or meaningful. The setting is beautiful but indifferent, and it offers no guidance or catharsis. It provides only space for their discomfort to echo.
Loskutoff’s writing is sharp and observant. There are moments that ache with recognition, like a child’s anxious question that goes unanswered or the way a cabin can feel like both shelter and trap. The lack of traditional shape or momentum actually worked for me. It felt true to how anxiety pulses through the body and how emotional distance can live in silence just as much as it can in conflict. The one thing that didn’t fully land for me was the ending, which felt abrupt and emotionally unresolved, but then, maybe, that too is the point.
My 3-star rating is not a complaint. It is simply a reflection of taste. I liked this and appreciated what it was doing, but I didn’t love it. I enjoyed Endangered Animals for what it is: a quiet, melancholic study of parental disconnection, mirrored personalities, and the space where words should go but don’t. I’d recommend it to readers who appreciate slow, introspective fiction, especially those interested in parent-child dynamics, emotional subtlety, and the quiet tension that exists in what goes unsaid.
This short story follows Peter, a recently divorced father, as he takes his daughter Marcy on a weekend trip to the woods. What is meant to be quality time turns into something quieter and harder to define. Marcy becomes fixated on spotting otters, while Peter stays emotionally adrift, torn between work distractions and his own discomfort. The story reads like a meditation on miscommunication and quiet grief. Nature becomes the third character, quietly reflecting what neither father nor daughter can bring themselves to say.
What struck me most was how alike Peter and Marcy are. He clearly wants her to open up, to engage more, to be different from him, but she isn’t. She mirrors his same hesitancy and anxious withdrawal, and that unsettles him. At the same time, their key difference lies in how they respond to the natural world. Marcy seems able to accept nature as it is, uncontrolled, unknowable, and fascinating. Peter, on the other hand, seems less aware of it. He’s physically present but emotionally removed, still expecting something from the environment and from her that they are not built to provide.
Even the wilderness around them seems to resist shaping itself into something easy or meaningful. The setting is beautiful but indifferent, and it offers no guidance or catharsis. It provides only space for their discomfort to echo.
Loskutoff’s writing is sharp and observant. There are moments that ache with recognition, like a child’s anxious question that goes unanswered or the way a cabin can feel like both shelter and trap. The lack of traditional shape or momentum actually worked for me. It felt true to how anxiety pulses through the body and how emotional distance can live in silence just as much as it can in conflict. The one thing that didn’t fully land for me was the ending, which felt abrupt and emotionally unresolved, but then, maybe, that too is the point.
My 3-star rating is not a complaint. It is simply a reflection of taste. I liked this and appreciated what it was doing, but I didn’t love it. I enjoyed Endangered Animals for what it is: a quiet, melancholic study of parental disconnection, mirrored personalities, and the space where words should go but don’t. I’d recommend it to readers who appreciate slow, introspective fiction, especially those interested in parent-child dynamics, emotional subtlety, and the quiet tension that exists in what goes unsaid.
August 31, 2021
I think daddy will have some explaining to do. Strange story, but at only 18 pages and free you might as well go for it.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews