It is the summer of 1964 -a summer of race riots, mini-skirts and Motown. Precocious, 14-year old Sheryl-Anne MacRae, dreams of fleeing her home on an isolated apple orchard in Southern Ontario to search for her long-lost mother. But her uncle and adopted father, Fergus, a charismatic utopian, brings home a handsome young hitchhiker named Peter.  Sheryl-Anne falls in love. By day Fergus is a well-mannered pharmacist, but at night he’s a pornographer. As summer progresses, the guitar-playing Peter is pulled deeper into Fergus’s bizarre underworld – a world of sex, drugs and photographs – fueled by Fergus’s obsession with the coming apocalypse. Days are spent in the orchard, while nights descend into hellish ritual. Sheryl-Anne longs to run away with Peter, but before she can convince him to escape with her, she will have to face some frightening truths about herself.

In this powerful, gothic tale, Kelly Watt captures the ethereal Sheryl-Anne, and with vivid, often frightening detail, charts a pedophile’s descent into madness. The work of a gifted storyteller, Mad Dog marks the arrival of an exceptional new novelist.