Toward the end of Setting the Family Free by Eric D. Goodman, one of the main characters thinks about what has to be done to “end this bloody twenty hours, thereby closing the darkest ordeal of his life,” but he can’t bring himself to do it. The fact that he is so conflicted is indicative of the many opposing threads that Goodman weaves together to create suspense and compassion in this tale of the escape of dozens of exotic animals from a homemade zoo in Chillicothe, Ohio. It’s a compelling story told by a skillful, adventurous writer.

The novel opens with a series of comments about animals from famous people as well as fictional characters who play leading roles in the story that’s about to unfold. Following the comments is a transcript of the local evening news broadcast in Chillicothe, so right away the reader knows that this story isn’t going to be told like most other novels. A traditional narrative doesn’t appear until the third chapter, but by that time the reader has a sense of the tone and scope of the story. By using this unusual technique in various parts of the novel, Goodman shows the events happening in a larger context without spending too much time on long discussions or back stories.

He also shows his penchant for unusual storytelling by including several chapters from the point of view of the animals who have escaped. The unexpected narrator isn’t new for Goodman—he told his novel Womb: A Novel in Utero from the point of view of an unborn fetus—and he excels at making the animals in this novel believable and sometimes sympathetic. Being immersed in the thoughts of a lion or a bear is fascinating.

But people are the ones who make the novel most engaging, especially Sammy Johnson, the owner of the exotic-animal zoo. When the sheriff and his deputies arrive at the Johnson home after being summoned by neighbors, they discover Sammy’s body in the animal warehouse, largely eaten by the animals. Many of the animals are gone, and the ones that remain can’t be contained because the sides of the cages have been cut. The question that provides the driving force of the story is why? Why did Sammy let the animals loose? If the animals loved Sammy as much as his wife says they did, why did they eat him?

Like a good breadcrumb trail, Goodman drops possible answers along the way, but often the answers only lead to more questions. And meanwhile the animals are roaming about, looking for food, and finding people to be the easiest source of meat. Goodman doesn’t shy away from the horror of facing a hungry lion, tiger, or bear, which keeps the tension taut from page to page. At times it’s the reality of an attack: “I knew I was dead . . . . but my husband kept yelling for me to resist . . . . So I did—I started cramming my fingers into its nose and eyes and beating its face.”

And other times it’s the anticipation: “He knows we’re here . . . . He could smell us long before we could see him. And he can hear us whispering. The idea isn’t to sneak up on him. It’s to make sure he doesn’t see us as a threat.”

Throughout the 20-hour search, relationships among the characters develop and change, some on the spot and some from the past as revealed by comments and remembrances. At one point, Sammy’s wife, Marielle, seems more distraught about the murdered animals than her dead husband, although she and Sammy were married for nearly 30 years. Relationships among the men hunting and killing the escaped animals also change, as must be the case among comrades battling intense danger.

In several places the hunt is compared to war, which plays a role in the story. Sammy spent two years in the Vietnam War, causing some people to speculate he was never the same after that and his experience may have affected his decisions at the end of his life. Maybe Setting the Family Free is really about war and the things it causes veterans to do even after they come home. Maybe it’s about learning to kill. When the deputy sheriff first sees the two tigers that killed a neighbor’s horses, he doesn’t shoot them. Later, he wonders why he didn’t.

Maybe it’s about choosing the right side in times of conflict. The animals didn’t ask to be let loose. But once they were free, they needed to eat, so they did it in the only way they knew how. Maybe it’s about the risks of being different. Nobody except Sammy had an exotic zoo that large.

Maybe it’s about all of the above, or maybe it’s just a good story about some dangerous animals that got loose, the people who loved them, and the people who hunted them down. I advise you to read it for yourself and see what you think. No doubt it will broaden your perspective on the meaning of family, freedom, and fear.