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"What Came West is astonishing. Unraveling the mythology of the Western with a genius for insight and description, Weil tells the story anew: a beautiful, ruminative, bloody, terrifying and brilliant book about a chapter in the life of one man and in the life of our country. Unmissable."— Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less
“Josh Weil has created that rare thing: a perfect literary western. You'll have to read this book twice, once for plot and again for language--for this sprawling landscape has found its worthy chronicler, and Josh Weil has found a landscape and character worthy of his attention and talent. What Came West is a tour de force by a writer at the height of his power.” – Tom Franklin, author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
“A dark, beautiful, and challenging novel of westward expansion….The rawness and intensity of What Came West recall Cormac McCarthy's Suttree--the harshness, the urgency, the sudden violence, elevated by Weil's soaring language.”
– Janet Fitch, author of The Revolution of Marina M.
“Like a patient pine or ancient mineral, Josh Weil watches history and humanity in What Came West, with an attention that feels monumental as the wilderness and wildness he transcendently portrays.”
– Samantha Hunt, author of The Unwritten Book
“There's solace, patience, and bristling terror in the words and woods of What Came West, a great novel that mines the California Gold Rush—a time of seismic environmental and societal change—for the truths we need today. Josh Weil is a meticulous researcher as well as a keen observer of humanity and nature, as you'll see in his finely detailed drawings and vividly realized characters. Prepare to be transported; these pages will swallow you up like the jaws of the wilderness.”
– Benjamin Percy, author of The Ninth Metal
“No writer mines the mysterious connections between humanity and land and history as memorably as Josh Weil. WHAT CAME WEST is a feat of the imagination, as mythic as it is intimate, as tender as it is relentless. It's also quite simply a masterpiece, one that had me so hooked from its opening pages, I didn't want to come up for air.”
- Tania James, author of Loot
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WHAT CAME WEST