The Literary West | HOT BISCUITS anthology and other great contributions to the Literature of the American West | ReadTheWest.com American Western Magazine

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Literature of the American West
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NEW! Groundbreaking! Exciting!
	"These stories of the West are so good and so true that you can almost smell the dust blowing off the high desert and feel the wind on your face. The characters are real Westerners, the kind who know how to bend with the harsh rhythms of the land and the weather and do so with hard-earned grace. You'll laugh and cry with them, and you won't forget them."Margaret Coel, author of The Shadow Dancer
HOT BISCUITS Eighteen Stories by Women and Men of the Ranching West

Angel Fire : A Novel
by Ron Franscell
At fifty-something, environmental reporter Mitch Rozier has grown estranged from Seattle's coffee shop and cyber culture. His newspaper is going under, and his relationship with Lexa McCaskill is stalled at "just living together." Then, he is summoned by his sly, exasperating father, Lyle, back to the family land, which Lyle plans to sell in the latest of his get-rich schemes before dying. Lexa follows, accompanied by her sister Mariah, and the stage is set for long-overdue confrontations -- between lovers, sisters, and father and son. Mountain Time is distinguished by humor and a wry insight into the power of family feuds to mark individuals and endure. Set against the glorious backdrop of Montana mountain country, it is a dazzling novel of love, family, and the contemporary West.

The Power of the Dog
by Thomas Savage
A major rediscovery! Set in 1920s Montana, this compelling domestic drama tells the story of two brothers and of the woman and young boy, mother and son, whose arrival on the brothers' ranch shatters an already tenuous peace. From the novel's startling first paragraph to its very last word, Thomas Savage's voice and the intense passion and cruelty of his characters keeps readers enthralled.

Desert Solitaire
by Edward Abbey
With language as colorful as a Canyonlands sunset and a perspective as pointed as a prickly pear, Cactus Ed captures the heat, mystery, and surprising bounty of desert life. Desert Solitaire is a meditation on the stark landscapes of the red-rock West, a passionate vote for wilderness, and a howling lament for the commercialization of the American outback. Edward Abbey lived for three seasons in the desert at Moab, Utah, and what he discovered about the land before him, the world around him, and the heart that beat within, is a fascinating, sometimes raucous, always personal account of a place that has already disappeared, but is worth remembering and living through again and again.

Where Rivers Change Direction
by Mark Spragg
If the West had a voice this is how it would sound. Passionate. Unequivocal. In the tradition of Ivan Doig's THIS HOUSE OF SKY, Mark Spragg's stunning collection, WHERE RIVERS CHANGE DIRECTION, renders an unforgettable story of an adolescence spent on the oldest dude ranch in Wyoming-a remote spread on the Shoshone National Forest, the largest block of unfenced wilderness in the lower forty-eight states.

In this sublime and unforgiving landscape, Spragg's distant and mercurial father, his emotionally isolated but resilient mother, his fierce and devoted younger brother Rick, and his mentor, a wry and wise cowboy named John, cleave to one another and to the harsh life they have chosen. Unrelenting winds, pitiless blizzards, muscular rivers--from these elements Spragg divines the universal yearnings for self-reliance, trust, acceptance, and love. WHERE RIVERS CHANGE DIRECTION illuminates the unexpected wisdom and irrevocable truth embedded in the small, but profound dramas of one boy's journey toward manhood.

Coyote Nowhere : In Search of America's Last Frontier
by John Holt, Ginny Diers (Photographer)
Coyote Nowhere - a phrase taken from Jack Kerouac's On the Road - accomplishes all of this while exploring and examining the northern high plains through John Holt's words and Ginny Diers's photographs. Together, they look for the true west, not the shortsighted vision myopically viewed by most as they whiz here and there along the interstate, rarely seeing anything. The book appears at the start of a new century and millenium and is a unique view of the west as seen through eyes that have stared down the barrels of plenty of hard living and never enough truth.

Coyote Nowhere begins in late spring in Livingston, Montana and describes a loop that courses down through Wyoming, back into Montana, crosses the border into Alberta, Canada, and heads north to the Northwest Territories before winding up back in Livingston as winter closes in. Along the way, Holt and Diers camp, fish, hang out in cowboy bars, dodge careening oil rig semis, meet their fair share of law enforcement officials, and sink even further into the country that has such a firm hold on them.