Pity the Beast

Description

Millenniaago, Ginny’s family farm was all grass and rock and wild horses. A thousandyears hence, it’ll all be peacefully underwater. In the matter-of-fact here andnow, though, it’s a hotbed of lust and resentment, because Ginny’s just cheatedon her husband with the man who lives next door. When acrowd of locals-including Ginny’s bitter sister Ella-turn up to help out on thefarm, a day of chores turns into a night of serious drinking, and then ofbrutal, communal retribution. By morning, Ginny’s been left for dead. But deadis the one thing she isn’t. With a stolen horse and rifle, she escapes into themountains, and a small posse of her tormentors gears up to give chase-to bringher home and beg forgiveness, or to make sure she disappears for good? With detours through time, space, myth, and into the minds of a pack ofphilosophical mules, Pity the Beastheralds the arrival of a major new force in American letters. It is a novel that turns our assumptions about the West, masculinity, good and evil, and thenature of storytelling onto their heads, with an eye to the cosmic as well asthe comic. It urges us to write our stories anew-if we want to avoid becomingbeasts ourselves.