A chilling historical horror novel set in the American west in 1912 follows a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a vampire haunting the fields of the Blackfeet reservation, seeking justice.
A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor, is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow.
Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.
The acclaimed author of American Rust, returns with The Son: an epic, multigenerational saga of power, blood, and land that follows the rise of one unforgettable Texas family from the Comanche raids of the 1800s to the border raids of the early 1900s to the oil booms of the 20th century.
Part epic of Texas, part classic coming-of-age story, part unflinching portrait of the bloody price of power, The Son is an utterly transporting novel that maps the legacy of violence in the American West through the lives of the McCulloughs, an ambitious family as resilient and dangerous as the land they claim.
Spring, 1849. The first male child born in the newly established Republic of Texas, Eli McCullough is thirteen years old when a marauding band of Comanche storm his homestead and brutally murder his mother and sister, taking him captive. Brave and clever, Eli quickly adapts to Comanche life, learning their ways and language, answering to a new name, carving a place as the chief's adopted son, and waging war against their enemies, including white men—complicating his sense of loyalty and understanding of who he is.
But when disease, starvation, and overwhelming numbers of armed Americans decimate the tribe, Eli finds himself alone. Neither white nor Indian, civilized nor fully wild, he must carve a place for himself in a world in which he does not fully belong—a journey of adventure, tragedy, hardship, grit, and luck that reverberates in the lives of his progeny.
Intertwined with Eli's story are those of his son, Peter, a man who bears the emotional cost of his father's drive for power, and JA, Eli's great-granddaughter, a woman who must fight hardened rivals to succeed in a man's world.
Philipp Meyer deftly explores how Eli's ruthlessness and steely pragmatism transform subsequent generations of McCulloughs. Love, honor, children are sacrificed in the name of ambition, as the family becomes one of the richest powers in Texas, a ranching-and-oil dynasty of unsurpassed wealth and privilege. Yet, like all empires, the McCoulloughs must eventually face the consequences of their choices.
Harrowing, panoramic, and vividly drawn, The Son is a masterful achievement from a sublime young talent.
The Orchardist is a highly original and haunting debut novel set in the untamed American West, where a makeshift family is shaped by violence, love, and an indelible connection to the land.
At the turn of the twentieth century, in a rural stretch of the Pacific Northwest, a solitary orchardist named Talmadge tends to his beloved apples, apricots, and plums. His life is a tapestry of solitude and dedication to the land, filled with the quiet, steady rhythm of nature.
One day, two teenage girls appear and steal his fruit at the market. Feral, scared, and very pregnant, they take refuge on Talmadge's land. With deep compassion, he offers them shelter and care, and a fragile trust begins to form between them.
However, this fragile peace is shattered when men with guns arrive, leading to a tragedy that forces Talmadge to confront the ghosts of his past and embark on a journey of protection and redemption.
Amanda Coplin writes with breathtaking precision and empathy, weaving a story that is both intimate and epic, evocative and atmospheric. The Orchardist is a novel about the disruption of a lonely harmony and the transformative power of opening one's heart to the world.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's eloquent, fully documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller in hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold almost four million copies and has been translated into seventeen languages. For this elegant thirtieth-anniversary edition—published in both hardcover and paperback—Brown has contributed an incisive new preface.
Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee changed forever our vision of how the West was really won.
Bob Dollar, a young man from Denver, embarks on a journey to the prairies of Texas and Oklahoma, tasked with scouting locations for hog farms for Global Pork Rind. However, this mission leads him to uncover not just potential sites, but the rich history and vibrant people of the area.
Settling into LaVon Fronk's bunkhouse and lending a hand at Cy Frease's Old Dog Café, Bob is confronted with the resilient and quirky inhabitants of Woolybucket. These are folks who have weathered tornadoes, dust storms, and economic shifts, holding steadfast to their land and legacy.
Robust, often bawdy, and strikingly original, this novel tracks the waves of change that have shaped the American landscape, capturing the essence of a community's struggle to maintain its identity in the face of modernization.
The Solace of Open Spaces is a collection of transcendent, lyrical essays on life in the American West, capturing both its otherworldly beauty and its cruelty. Poet and filmmaker Gretel Ehrlich went to Wyoming in 1975 to make documentaries when her partner died. She stayed on, finding she couldn’t leave.
This book is a chronicle of her first years on “the planet of Wyoming,” a personal journey into a place, a feeling, and a way of life. Ehrlich brings depth, tenderness, and humor to her portraits of the peculiar souls who also call it home: hermits and ranchers, rodeo cowboys and schoolteachers, dreamers and realists.
Originally written as journal entries addressed to a friend, The Solace of Open Spaces is raw, meditative, electrifying, and uncommonly wise. In prose “as expansive as a Wyoming vista, as charged as a bolt of prairie lightning”, Ehrlich explores the magical interplay between our interior lives and the world around us.