Close Range: Wyoming Stories

'The wild country - indigo jags of mountain, grassy plain everlasting, tumbled stones like fallen cities, the flaring roll of sky - provokes a spiritual shudder. It is like a deep note that cannot be heard but is felt, it is like a claw in the gut.' From the author of the bestselling novels The Shipping News and Accordion Crimes comes a collection of short stories inspired by the harsh and unforgiving landscape of Wyoming. Here are men and women struggling to make a life and a living against the backdrop of a 'dangerous and indifferent ground' that seems to confound them at every turn. Throughout, Annie Proulx invests these stories with an intelligence and black humour that transforms them into something new and surprising. In one story, a slight young man defies his mother's insults to become a rodeo star, while in another, an octogenarian finds himself to the ranch that he quit decades before - against his better judgement. Elsewhere, Proulx demonstrates her taste for the macabre in a grisly tale of bad weather, gambling and amputation set a hundred years ago. One equally horrific tale, '55 Miles to the Gas Pump', outlines some shudder-inducing ways of passing the time when you live in the middle of nowhere. And in 'Brokeback Mountain' Proulx changes gear once again to describe the unexpected love that flowers between two cowboys as they struggle with the elements in some extremely inhospitable terrain. Inventive, compassionate and wildly funny, these marvellous stories explore the unbreakable bond between a people and their land, and will delight Proulx's fans everywhere.