Sheila, the holder of two masters degrees, single, attractive, and the mother of an 18-year-old son who is away at college, has chosen to work as a bus driver for a major ski resort in Colorado rather than a professional job because she loves the outdoors and doesn't want to wear pantyhose. The story takes place in 1993 in the Vehicle Maintenance Department of Molybdenum Mountain Ski Resort, not far from Vail, Colorado. One day, as she holds a hose to wash one of the buses, a pulsing orange and blue light that may be viewed only with her peripheral vision frightens her but also offers her one wish. Its presence creates both panic and reassurance as Sheila tries to formulate a wish. However, before she conceptualizes one, she, in one poof, is transformed into a male mountain gorilla. Through her boyfriend, Kurt, a handsome mechanic, she learns that the resort has brought in a dozen trained gorillas to help install a new ski lift because their labor is much less expensive than machines. This story is her journey, along with Kurt, her boss Blaise, her son, and her Jungian Analyst, to try to understand her metamorphosis, to communicate with the other gorillas, and through them try to determine whether they were also once human. Once she accepts the horror of her new self, she must figure out how to live the rest of her life.
About the Author: Susan L. Metzger began writing her first novel when she was nine. She was the assistant editor of her high school literary magazine and won numerous fiction contests as a high school and college student. She completed a bachelor's degree in Sociology at Iowa State University before earning an MS degree in Counseling Psychology and an MBA in Management & Organizational Behavior at George Williams College. She then returned to her true self when she completed a third masters degree, an MFA in Creative Writing, at Western Michigan University. Her series of dog stories-the Spirit Dogs Trilogy-was published under pen name Susan Kelleher. This was followed in March, 2013 by Two Boys, published under her real name. Mountain Woman Mountain Beast is her fifth book. Her sixth, Reggie and the Hot Water Heater, is a children's story, and another adult novel, Bertie & Pip, is forthcoming. She grew up in Illinois but spent half her life in Colorado, hiking, biking, skiing, and playing violin and viola in orchestras and chamber groups. She is never dogless, having grown up with two Collies and then breeding, showing, and training Flat-Coated Retrievers since 1982. She has one son, Alex, who is a radiologist and classical pianist.