Bruce Holbert

A family moves violently through their lives, fierce with each other yet deeply loyal.

A Novel

Whiskey

Lonesome Animals was named as a Best Book of 2012 by both The Seattle Times and Slate, a literary debut sparking with beautiful language set against the rugged landscape of 1920s Washington state. Holbert returns with The Hour of Lead, an epic family novel and coming of age story that is once again imbibed with the mythology of the west. After losing both his twin and his father in a brutal, unexpected snowstorm, Matt Lawson must take over the family ranch. As his mother disappears into grief, Matt learns the hardest lesson the west has to teach: he is on his own. The necessity of work stabilizes young Matt against the pitfalls of first love with Wendy, the daughter of a local grocer, and their ragged end will sent Matt on a journey across the county, leaving Wendy to tend the ranch with local schoolteacher Linda Jefferson and her unwieldy son Lucky. It will take decades for Matt to learn his way back home, and that long journey will have great impact on all of those around him. Invoking the same beautiful landscape and language of his critically–acclaimed debut, The Hour of Lead is a wider, more expansive novel, less violent but just as affecting, another important contribution to the literature of the west.

The Hour of Lead

Charles Montgomery

Rachel Toor

Jonathan Potter

K. Bartholomew

Andy Lang

David R. Clark

C. J. Rose

Paul D. Cohn

Lisa Marie Smith

Jim Thielman

Paul Lindholdt

Shann Ray

L. P. Masters

Ellen Welcker

Terry Robinson

Jane Mark

Anthony M. Aguilera

Carver Bain

Maurice Barr

Casey Bascetta

Molly McGoldrick Beck

Linda Bond

Eric Boose

Holly Chase Borba

Emily Cabbage

Patrick Cabbage

Beth Camp

Tristen Canfield

Becky Carlson

Gretchyn Carter

Jenny Catlin

Sandra L. Christensen

Ann M. Ciasullo

Ann M. Colford

Janelle Cordero

Linda Fifer

Kay Gillies Dixon

Sue Eller

Lydia-Laquatra Fesler

Eli Francovich

Stephanie Gady

Karyn Gallaway

Jean Wolff Gassman

Susan Goertz

Dixie McCollough Grimm

Nia Guest

Jim Hanlen

Kailee Haong

Isaac Helt

Jillian Holbrook

Arielle Hunter

Jordyn Jackson

Sandra Anderson Johnson

Laurie Klein

Duncan Lang

Lisa Laughlin

Yvonne Higgins Leach

Nan Comeaux Luppert

Alexander Antonio Manzoni

Amy Silbernagel McCaffree

J. McCowen-Rose

Karen Mobley

Willis Moore

Travis Laurence Naught

LilyMae Nerren

Rachel Nerren

Ryder Nerren

Sarah Ben Olson

Madison Oneto

Audrey Duff Overstreet

Judy Palpant

Kiale Palpant

Kassidy Reilly

Melissa Rhoades

Carl Alexander Rice

Tina Rodeen

Evalynd Maple Rodriguez

Jude Rodriguez

Olivia Butterfly Rodriguez

Constance Shultz

Marian Sheafor

Beverly Smick

Connie Taylor

Kathy Lee Tolleth

Teresa Vanairsdale

Diana Wickes

A Poetry and Prose Anthology

Spokane Writes

In Lonesome Animals, Arthur Strawl, a tormented former lawman, is called out of retirement to hunt a serial killer with a sense of the macabre who has been leaving elaborately carved bodies of Native Americans across three counties. As the pursuit ensues, Strawl's own dark and violent history weaves itself into the hunt, shedding light on the remains of his broken family: one wife taken by the river, one by his own hand; an adopted Native American son who fancies himself a Catholic prophet; and a daughter, whose temerity and stoicism contrast against the romantic notions of how the west was won. In the vein of True Gritand Blood Meridian, Lonesome Animals is a western novel reinvented, a detective story inverted for the west. It contemplates the nature of story and heroism in the face of a collapsing ethos –not only of Native American culture, but also of the first wave of white men who, through the battle against the geography and its indigenous people, guaranteed their own destruction. But it is also about one man's urgent, elegiac search for justice amidst the craven acts committed on the edges of civilization.

Lonesome Animals

Bruce Holbert

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