“In the year of our Lord 1894, I became an outlaw,” begins Ada, the narrator of North’s striking and subversive novel. A cowboy immigrant from the Ottoman Empire (Lurie) who communes with ghosts a resilient frontierswoman (Nora) whose desperation foregrounds the complex humanity that flies under the radar of most Westerns, particularly in their female characters-Obreht’s engrossing novel shows readers how dynamic the characters in a literary Western can be. Army imported camels in the mid-19th century to use as pack animals in the Southwest? Obreht harnesses this bit of obscure regional history for a literary Western that is inventive in a way that only she could accomplish. Below are seven literary Westerns that reimagine the genre’s potential by giving us characters, voices and a West that is as beautiful as it is provocative and progressive.ĭid you know the U.S. Taking my own step meant acknowledging the critical work of those who did so before me. It’s also a book that uses the Western, and all the baggage that genre carries, while expanding its possibilities.Īny writer writing a Western-even a literary Western-knows that they stand on the threshold of creating something that’s equally capable of rocking backward as it is of propelling forward. It’s a book that explores greed, violence, sexuality, and morality on the frontier in a brutal coming-of-age story, set during a seminal moment in American history.

Louis home and joins a vicious party of 49ers while they travel overland to Gold Rush California. In my novel, Child in the Valley, 17-year-old Joshua Gaines is recently orphaned and deeply in debt after the death of his adopted father. So when I decided to write a literary Western for my debut novel, I did so with the intent to push back on the genre, opening it up in ways that rethink what a Western can be and do. As a result, loving that genre is difficult, even a burden. The genre loomed large in my childhood and my sense of place while growing up in Texas I’m aware, though, that it has historically been one of exclusion, framing adventure, romance, and the frontier through a singular lens. My heart has long been held hostage by the Western.

Hernan diaz in the distance