Westerns Upended

The book cover of

Horses. Cowboys. Gunfights. Genderfluid outlaws? If you’ve written off Westerns because of their stereotypes, make like Annie Oakley and give one of these books a shot. They upend the conventions of the genre in new and interesting ways.

Here is the booklist in the catalog – https://decorah.biblionix.com/?booklist=27097

 

Cover of "The Sisters Brothers" by Patrick deWitt. It features two men from the 19th century, both wearing dark suits and wide-brimmed hats. One is resting an arm on the other's shoulder. A round badge states "Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

The Sisters Brothers

The Sisters Brothers – Patrick deWitt

Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. The enigmatic and powerful man known only as the Commodore has ordered it, and his henchmen, Eli and Charlie Sisters, will make sure of it. Though Eli doesn’t share his brother’s appetite for whiskey and killing, he’s never known anything else. But their prey isn’t an easy mark, and on the road from Oregon City to Warm’s gold-mining claim outside Sacramento, Eli begins to question what he does for a living-and whom he does it for.

With The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt pays homage to the classic Western, transforming it into an unforgettable comic tour de force. Filled with a remarkable cast of characters-losers, cheaters, and ne’er-do-wells from all stripes of life-and told by a complex and compelling narrator, it is a violent, lustful odyssey through the underworld of the 1850s frontier that beautifully captures the humor, melancholy, and grit of the Old West and two brothers bound by blood, violence, and love.

 

The book cover of "Outlawed" by Anna North features the silhouette of a cowboy hat and bandana against a sky with clouds. The title is at the top in bold red letters and the author's name is at the bottom in yellow. The cover highlights a Reese's Book Club badge.

Outlawed

Outlawed – Anna North

The day of her wedding, 17 year old Ada’s life looks good; she loves her husband, and she loves working as an apprentice to her mother, a respected midwife. But after a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town where barren women are routinely hanged as witches, her survival depends on leaving behind everything she knows.

She joins up with the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang, a band of outlaws led by a preacher-turned-robber known to all as the Kid. Charismatic, grandiose, and mercurial, the Kid is determined to create a safe haven for outcast women. But to make this dream a reality, the Gang hatches a treacherous plan that may get them all killed. And Ada must decide whether she’s willing to risk her life for the possibility of a new kind of future for them all.

Outlawed dusts off the myth of the old West and reignites the glimmering promise of the frontier with an entirely new set of feminist stakes. Anna North has crafted a pulse-racing, page-turning saga about the search for hope in the wake of death, and for truth in a climate of small-mindedness and fear.

 

Book cover of "My Ántonia" by Willa Cather. The title and author's name are in white capital letters against a background of tall, golden wheat. At the top, there's a quote from H.L. Mencken, and at the bottom, it notes a foreword by Kathleen Norris.

My Ãntonia

My Ãntonia – Willa Cather

Willa Cather’s My Ãntonia is considered one of the most significant American novels of the twentieth century. Set during the great migration west to settle the plains of the North American continent, the narrative follows Antonia Shimerda, a pioneer who comes to Nebraska as a child and grows with the country, inspiring a childhood friend, Jim Burden, to write her life story. The novel is important both for its literary aesthetic and as a portrayal of important aspects of American social ideals and history, particularly the centrality of migration to American culture.

 

 

The cover of the book "Inland: A Novel" by Téa Obreht features bold, colorful abstract art with bright yellows, purples, and blues mimicking a landscape. The text indicates it's a New York Times Bestseller and mentions the author is also known for "The Tiger's Wife.

Inland

by Téa Obreht

In the lawless, drought-ridden lands of the Arizona Territory in 1893, two extraordinary lives unfold. Nora is an unflinching frontierswoman awaiting the return of the men in her life her husband, who has gone in search of water for the parched household, and her elder sons, who have vanished after an explosive argument. Nora is biding her time with her youngest son, who is convinced that a mysterious beast is stalking the land around their home.

Meanwhile, Lurie is a former outlaw and a man haunted by ghosts. He sees lost souls who want something from him, and he finds reprieve from their longing in an unexpected relationship that inspires a momentous expedition across the West. The way in which Lurie’s death-defying trek at last intersects with Nora’s plight is the surprise and suspense of this brilliant novel.

Mythical, lyrical, and sweeping in scope, Inland is grounded in true but little-known history. It showcases all of Téa Obreht’s talents as a writer, as she subverts and reimagines the myths of the American West, making them entirely and unforgettably her own.

 

The image is a book cover for "In the Distance" by Hernan Diaz, which is a Pulitzer Prize finalist. The cover features a mirrored image of a barren landscape with mountains in the background. The title and author's name are displayed in large, bold letters.

 

In The Distance

In The Distance – Hernan Diaz

A young Swedish immigrant finds himself penniless and alone in California. The boy travels East in search of his brother, moving on foot against the great current of emigrants pushing West. Driven back again and again, he meets naturalists, criminals, religious fanatics, swindlers, Indians, and lawmen, and his exploits turn him into a legend.

Diaz defies the conventions of historical fiction and genre, offering a probing look at the stereotypes that populate our past and a portrait of radical foreignness.

 

 

The cover of "How Much of These Hills Is Gold" by C Pam Zhang features the title in bold white letters on a dark blue, textured background. Surrounding the title are two illustrated tigers, one in the bottom left and one in the bottom right, against a golden backdrop. The book is longlisted for The 2020 Booker Prize.

How Much Of These Hills Is Gold

How Much Of These Hills Is Gold – C. Pam Zhang

Ba dies in the night; Ma is already gone. Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence. Fleeing the threats of their western mining town, they set off to bury their father in the only way that will set them free from their past. Along the way, they encounter giant buffalo bones, tiger paw prints, and the specters of a ravaged landscape as well as family secrets, sibling rivalry, and glimpses of a different kind of future.

Both epic and intimate, blending Chinese symbolism and reimagined history with fiercely original language and storytelling, How Much of These Hills Is Gold is a haunting adventure story, an unforgettable sibling story, and the announcement of a stunning new voice in literature. On a broad level, it explores race in an expanding country and the question of where immigrants are allowed to belong. But page by page, it’s about the memories that bind and divide families, and the yearning for home.

 

Cover of "Close Range: Wyoming Stories" by Annie Proulx. The cover features a snowy landscape with a solitary black and white horse near a stream. Text highlights the author's accolades and mentions the inclusion of "Brokeback Mountain," now a feature film.

Close Range

Close Range – Annie Proulx

Annie Proulx’s masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in this collection of stories about loneliness, quick violence, and wrong kinds of love. In”The Mud Below” a rodeo rider’s obsession marks the deepening fissures between his family life and self-imposed isolation. In “The Half-Skinned Steer,” an elderly fool drives west to the ranch he grew up on for his brother’s funeral, and dies a mile from home. In “Brokeback Mountain” the difficult affair between two cowboys survives everything but the world’s violent intolerance.

These are stories of desperation, hard times, and unlikely elation, set in a landscape both brutal and magnificent. Enlivened by folk tales, flights of fancy, and details of ranch and rural work, they juxtapose Wyoming’s traditional character and attitudes confrontation of tough problems, prejudice, persistence in the face of difficulty with the more benign values of the new west.

 

Book cover of "Battleborn" by Claire Vaye Watkins. The title and author's name appear in large white text against a backdrop of a cloudy sky over a desert landscape. A review quote from Vogue sits at the top: "The most captivating voice to come out of the West since Annie Proulx.

Battleborn

Battleborn – Claire Vaye Watkins

Like the work of Cormac McCarthy, Denis Johnson, Richard Ford, and Annie Proulx, Battleborn represents a near-perfect confluence of sensibility and setting. In each of these ten unforgettable stories, Claire Vaye Watkins writes her way fearlessly into the mythology of the American West, utterly reimagining it. Her characters orbit around the region’s vast spaces, winning redemption despite – and often because of – the hardship and violence they endure. The arrival of a foreigner transforms the exchange of eroticism and emotion at a prostitution ranch. A prospecting hermit discovers the limits of his rugged individualism when he tries to rescue an abused teenager. Decades after she led her best friend into a degrading encounter in a Vegas hotel room, a woman feels the aftershock. Arcing from the sweeping and sublime to the minute and personal, from Gold Rush to ghost town to desert to brothel, the collection echoes not only in its title but also in its fierce, undefeated spirit the motto of her home state.


Posted: September 2, 2021