Finally: "Red Moon" by Benjamin Percy

Finally: Red Moon by Benjamin Percy, 2013, 9781455501663.

Committee book.  This one took forever.  533 freaking pages.  I would have enjoyed the novel much more if he cut 200 pages out.  Anyway, it was okay but too long.  Just not my bag.

Werewolf novel.  Set in an alternate world with a nice mix of history and modern day where werewolves fit into everyday society.  Percy takes a mix of things where werewolves are second class citizens and under terror watch lists and blood testing.  Parallels to AIDS, paranoia about Muslims, radicals versus rational people, Middle Eastern politics, Israel, military engagement overseas, 9/11, domestic terrorism, 1960s activism.

Werewolves have been around for millenia. As the novel U.S. werewolves are required to take a drug that prevents them from transform from human to werewolf.  The U.S. has had troops in the Lycan Republic (carved out in the forests between Finland and Russia after WWII) for decades to protect the valuable uranium mines there.  The troops in the Lycan Republic there have been fighting an insurgency that whole time.

1. So, U.S. radicals send werewolves on domestic flights.  Those werewolves transform on the flight and kill everyone.  The only survivor out of four planes is teenaged Patrick. 
2. Immediately after the plane attacks the WI home of teenaged Claire's activist werewolf parents is raided and her parents shot dead.  Claire escapes and goes cross coutnry to Oregon to find her reclusive werewolf aunt. 
3.  Oregon Governor Douchebag is a former Army officer who fought in the Lycan Republic.  Douchebag is a loudmouth, boozer and whoremonger.  Is forwardness is appreciated by many and he starts ranting against werewolves - even after a werewolf prostitutes bites and infects him - and his political cachet grows. 
4. Patrick's father is deployed to the Lycan Republic. Patrick is traumatized from the plane attack and makes friends with students at his new H.S. who anti-wolf skinheads.

Things happen. Love blooms between Claire and Patrick.  Governor Douchebag becomes President.  Claire's uncle is a nutbag terrorist.  Other bad guys show up.  Patrick's father goes missing.  Patrick enlists and goes to the Lycan Republic and is sole survivor of ambush and finds his now werewolf father.  A werewolf vaccine is created.  A werewolf flies a explosive filled plane into a Oregon nuke plant and the entire NW is a Geiger counter paradise.  Patrick hunts Oregon for the vaccine.  Patrick finds Claire.  Some bad guy werewolves are killed and others carry out plan to spread infection through grain processing plants around the Midwest.

Comments:
1.  According to author bio Percy is a dirty Ole.  At least he is not from Carleton.
2.  Set-up for a sequel.
3.  Percy put a lot into the science of werewolf infection and the politics of the issues he created.