Young Max Schumann's mother, Isolde, has been stolen away by the malevolent Erlking, a trickster spirit of death out of German legend. Alone and scared in a chicken coop with only three hens and nightmarish sketches to keep him company, Max realizes he must embark on an odyssey into the dark, violent heart of war-torn Europe if he is to save his mother. But first he must find his father, Oscar Schumann, a captain of the elite Wehrwolf, a band of guerrilla fighters and shape-shifters out of folklore.
Through the blood-streaked and ravaged twilight of the Third Reich, father and son begin a hunt through a world transfigured by terror and strangeness, an atavistic world where magical history collides with actual history and where sacrifices must be made for those we love.
The Killing Moon is a novel of fantasy and myth-making that forges a link between ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and moments of tenderness that keep people alive in the face of total devastation and loss.