A feared cage fighter in Mixed Martial Arts, Daniel is closing in on greatness—until an injury derails his career. Out of work in his country hometown, Daniel slips into the underworld, moonlighting as muscle for a childhood-friend-turned-mid-level-gangster. While his wife works nights and his twelve-year-old daughter gets into scraps of her own, Daniel tries to escape and build a nobler life for his family—but he sinks deeper into a violent, unpredictable world, soon sparking a conflict that can only be settled in blood.
Written with equal parts tenderness and horror, In the Cage weaves together a grittily masterful tale of violence, family, and resilience as Kevin Hardcastle penetrates what it means to survive in the rural underclass.
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Kevin Hardcastle’s stories have appeared in
Shenandoah,
The Walrus,
The New Quarterly,
The Malahat Review,
EVENT,
PRISM International, and
Joyland. His work has been anthologized in
Best Canadian Stories, and twice in
The Journey Prize Stories. His debut collection of short stories
Debris (Biblioasis, 2015) won the 2016 Trillium Book Award. Hardcastle lives in Toronto.