About the Book
Master storyteller Don Waters returns to the desert in his third book set in the American Southwest. With the gothic sensibility of Flannery O'Connor and emotional delicacy of Raymond Carver, these nine contemporary stories deftly explore the lives of characters losing or clinging to a fleeting faith and struggling to find something meaningful to believe in beneath overpowering desert skies.
Soldiers, seekers, priests, prisoners, and surfers pursue their fate amid bizarre, sometimes overwhelming circumstances. In "La Luz de Jesus," a gutless Los Angeles screenwriter, a believer in nothing but the god of Hollywood, must reorient after he encounters a group of penitents in New Mexico's Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The decorated soldier in "Espanola" faces more chaos back home than he did during his tour in Iraq. And "The Saints of Rattlesnake Mountain" pairs a "trustee" prison inmate and a wild mustang horse, both wards of the state of Nevada, as they fumble toward a spiritual truth.
These stories capture the spirit of a region and its people. Once again Waters assembles an unconventional cast of characters, capturing their foibles and imperfections, and always rendering them with compassion as these modern-day martyrs and spiritually haunted survivors strive for some kind of redemption.
Ingenious, sometimes forbidding, often absurd, and altogether original, The Saints of Rattlesnake Mountain is a stirring tribute to the lives, loves, and hopes of the faithful and the dispossessed.
About the Author :
Don Waters is the author of Sunland and Desert Gothic, winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award. His fiction has been widely published and anthologized in the Pushcart Prize, Best of the West, and New Stories from the Southwest. His journalism has appeared in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Outside. Born and raised in Reno, Nevada, he lives in Portland, Oregon.
Review :
"The Saints of Rattlesnake Mountain is shot through with intense hunger and huge heart, written by a writer whose talent is big enough to handle both. Don Waters crafts seemingly straight-ahead stories that turn in ways both surprising and perfect, and wind up so richly complex you'll want to shut your eyes and sit a while contemplating each. There's wisdom here and a gentleness of spirit that makes this a strikingly meaningful, deeply affecting book." --Josh Weil, author of The Great Glass Sea
"In this marvelous collection, the institutions of (American) western civilization are interrogated and unveiled, be it military, religious, familial, corporate, or correctional. Waters' characters inhabit the challenge of the essential conflicts: man vs. nature, man vs. man, man vs. self, and usually simultaneously. The simmering pain and anger of these people is balanced by their humor, humiliations, temporary successes, heart-breaking failures, and mostly, by the clear affection with which they're rendered. These stories capture not only the inhabitants of the desert west, but the landscape's harsh and stately beauty, its expanse and solitude, and the ever-present sense that a person within it is always at its mercy--merciless and merciful by equal measure." ?Antonya Nelson, author of Funny Once and Bound
"With The Saints of Rattlesnake Mountain, Don Waters once again shows us why he's one of the most original and exciting voices to come out of the West." ?Willy Vlautin, author of The Motel Life and The Free
The Saints of Rattlesnake Mountainis shot through with intense hunger and huge heart, written by a writer whose talent is big enough to handle both. Don Waters crafts seemingly straight-ahead stories that turn in ways both surprising and perfect, and wind up so richly complex you ll want to shut your eyes and sit a while contemplating each. There s wisdom here and a gentleness of spirit that makes this a strikingly meaningful, deeply affecting book. Josh Weil, author ofThe Great Glass Sea
"
In this marvelous collection, the institutions of (American) western civilization are interrogated and unveiled, be it military, religious, familial, corporate, or correctional. Waters characters inhabit the challenge of the essential conflicts: man vs. nature, man vs. man, man vs. self, and usually simultaneously. The simmering pain and anger of these people is balanced by their humor, humiliations, temporary successes, heart-breaking failures, and mostly, by the clear affection with which they re rendered. These stories capture not only the inhabitants of the desert west, but the landscape s harsh and stately beauty, its expanse and solitude, and the ever-present sense that a person within it is always at its mercy merciless and merciful by equal measure. Antonya Nelson, author of Funny Once and Bound
"
WithThe Saints of Rattlesnake Mountain, Don Waters once again shows us why he s one of the most original and exciting voices to come out of the West. Willy Vlautin, author of The Motel Life and The Free
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