Erika T. Wurth

A Novel

White Horse

Margaritte, a pregnant, sixteen-year-old Native American teen living in Denver, longs to escape the drug abuse, poverty, and unemployment of the city with her unreliable boyfriend.

Crazy Horse's Girlfriend

You Who Enter Here

From the author of White Horse (“Twisty and electric.” ―The New York Times Book Review) comes a terrifying and resonant novel about a woman who uses her unique gift to learn the truth about her sister’s death.

Olivia Becente was never supposed to have the gift. The ability to commune with the dead was the specialty of her sister, Naiche. But when Naiche dies unexpectedly and under strange circumstances, somehow Olivia suddenly can’t stop seeing and hearing from spirits.

A few years later, she’s the most in-demand paranormal investigator in Denver. She’s good at her job, but the loss of Naiche haunts her. That’s when she hears from the Brown Palace, a landmark Denver hotel. The owner can’t explain it, but every few years, a girl is found dead in room 904, no matter what room she checked into the night before. As Olivia tries to understand these disturbing deaths, the past and the present collide as Olivia’s investigation forces her to confront a mysterious and possibly dangerous cult, a vindictive journalist, betrayal by her friends, and shocking revelations about her sister’s secret life.

The Haunting of Room 904 is a paranormal thriller that is as edgy as it is heartfelt and simmers with intensity and longing. Erika T. Wurth lives up to her reputation as “a gritty new punkish outsider voice in American horror.”

The Haunting of Room 904

Fiction. Native American Studies. Erika T. Wurth's BUCKSKIN COCAINE is a wild, beautiful ride into the seedy underworld of Native American film. These are stories about men maddened by fame, actors desperate for their next buckskin gig, directors grown cynical and cruel, and dancers who leave everything behind in order to make it, only to realize at thirty that there is nothing left. Poetic and strange, Wurth's characters and vivid language will burn themselves into your mind, and linger. "This is the raw stuff, the loud stuff, the hard stuff, the true stuff. It'll infect you in a way you won't realize at first, too. Not until days later, when you can't remember if you read this or you lived it. Trust me: you did both."-- Stephen Graham Jones "BUCKSKIN COCAINE is a big voicey chorus of drugs, sex, booze, movies, and most of all the drumbeat of want, need, and desire."-- Kyle Minor

Buckskin Cocaine

"This ghost story is a perfect example of new wave horror that will also satisfy fans of classic Stephen King." —Silvia Moreno-Garcia, author of The Daughter of Doctor Moreau and Mexican Gothic Erika T. Wurth's White Horse is a gritty, vibrant debut novel about an Indigenous woman who must face her past when she discovers a bracelet haunted by her mother’s spirit. Some people are haunted in more ways than one... Kari James, Urban Native, is a fan of heavy metal, ripped jeans, Stephen King novels, and dive bars. She spends most of her time at her favorite spot in Denver, a bar called White Horse. There, she tries her best to ignore her past and the questions surrounding her mother who abandoned her when she was just two years old. But soon after her cousin Debby brings her a traditional bracelet that once belonged to Kari’s mother, Kari starts seeing disturbing visions of her mother and a mysterious creature. When the visions refuse to go away, Kari must uncover what really happened to her mother all those years ago. Her father, permanently disabled from a car crash, can’t help her. Her Auntie Squeaker seems to know something but isn’t eager to give it all up at once. Debby’s anxious to help, but her controlling husband keeps getting in the way. Kari’s journey toward a truth long denied by both her family and law enforcement forces her to confront her dysfunctional relationships, thoughts about a friend she lost in childhood, and her desire for the one thing she’s always wanted but could never have...

A Thousand Horses Out to Sea is a dark, feminine collection of poetry. There is song here, stomp dance and corrido and deep, sad lyricism. Set mainly in desert Southwest, inside the glittering Indian city of Albuquerque, the lives in these poems are full of cruelty, beauty, and pain.

THOUSAND HORSES OUT TO SEA

Indian Trains is about small town Indians, about community and family, about thieves, prostitutes, train stealers, drug dealers, loners, jerks, dreaming alcoholics, and the ones who did everything but all of that. It is about an entirely new tribe: urban mixed-bloods of multiple tribes who are respectful of where their ancestors have come from but are increasingly going to Indian powwows, Indian bars, and Urban Native organizations for cultural fulfillment rather than only returning to reservations to find out who they are. They are about 70 percent of the Indian population--the truly unsung peoples of America. This is a funny, sad, and powerful book. Each poem is lovely and the cumulative effect is devastating.--Sherman Alexie The country between poetry and stories is where this story-singer comes from. Tales of polished obsidian. Full of night, fascinating, and frightful. Glistening and brilliant. Small enough to hold in the hand. Sharp enough to tear open the heart. I was left breathless.--Sandra Cisneros Indian Trains is a marvelous, intimate poetic journey. There are hardy native families here, the immediacy of survivors and traditionalists. The incomparable images arise from worried hearts, irony, the actual centers of cultural memory. Erika Wurth writes about a woman on a leather chair, 'a revolution in her heart, ' as she waits for 'metaphors to change everything.' And they do in this brave, inspired selection of poems.--Gerald Vizenor, Almost Ashore

Indian Trains

Fiction. Native American Studies. Reissue with introduction by Isabel Quintero. Sixteen-year-old Margueritte wants out. Out of her small town, where girls get pregnant young and end up stuck, like her mom. Out of a family where her Native American mother won't leave her white, alcoholic, abusive father. Margueritte hopes if she and her cousin Jake sell enough weed, they can at least escape to Denver one day. That's when Mike comes to town. Like Margueritte, he loves to read, he's funny, and he's Indian. A coming-of-age novel about the female, urban Indian experience, CRAZY HORSE'S GIRLFRIEND is not only a gritty, unexpectedly funny, page-turning novel about a girl who just wants a little bit more--it's an instant classic.

Crazy Horse's Girlfriend (Second Edition)

A beautifully rendered, brutally realistic Native American gang novel. Matthew has grown up in hell. His father is gone, and his mother drinks and hooks up with men who abuse Matthew and his sister. He finally decides to hit the streets of Farmington to get away and to drink himself to deathin his mind, his destiny. He meets Chris, who saves him, takes him home, cleans him up, gets him sober, and initiates Matthew into one of Albuquerques Native American gangs, the 505s. The 505s have been around for generations. They now sell heroin, and its their subservience to the Mexican gangs that has allowed them to survive. However, Chris decides that his little Native American gang deserves to be as big as the Mexican gangs in Albuquerque, bringing in new business from deep inside Indigenous communities in Mexico. Then, Matthew falls in love with Chriss girlfriend. Matthews story is one of terrible darkness, but also, unexpected beauty and tenderness. You Who Enter Here is like nothing so much as a metal splinter, brilliant and sharp, that works its way through your veins and right into your beating heart. Erika Wurth is a beautiful writer, and You Who Enter Here is a bloody and catastrophically heartbreaking masterpiece.  Benjamin Whitmer, author of Cry Father Get ready to experience a jaw-dropping, heart-pounding ride. You Who Enter Here escorts Erika Wurth into her own brand of Native noir, an electrifying read you wont forget. Wurths characters haunt the underbelly of crime fiction and lure you in. Harrowing, wicked, and utterly compelling. I couldnt put this book down.  Debra Magpie Earling, author of Perma Red You Who Enter Here is subversive and beautiful as hell because Erika Wurth and her characters do the radical work of loving the people often deemed unworthy of love: the thugs, hood rats, gangstas, the junkies. And she loves them on their terms, for who they are in the dark, while acknowledging the complicated knots of circumstance, choice, and survival. This novel isnt operating on our ignorant views of Native People, but following the rules of its own world and peopleanother form of radical love. I feel wide open and moved to love harder and listen better, and I am sure, Dear Reader, you will feel the same.  Steven Dunn, author of Potted Meat

Erika T. Wurth

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