Annie Proulx Stories: New and Selected

With a new introduction by Colm Toibin. From one of the greatest story writers of our time, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, two O. Henry Prizes, and the celebrated author of Brokeback Mountain, comes a collection that includes three new stories and the most iconic stories of Annie Proulx’s stunning, decades-long career. Annie Proulx’s “gritty and gleaming stories” (New York Times Book Review) are about loneliness, violence, desperation, and the wrong kinds of love. In “The Mud Below,” a rodeo rider’s obsession marks the deepening fissures between his family life and self-imposed isolation. In “The Half-Skinned Steer,” an elderly fool drives west to the range he grew up on for his brother’s funeral and dies a mile from home. In the masterpiece, “Brokeback Mountain,” the difficult affair between two cowboys survives everything but the world’s intolerance. These are stories of hard times, and unlikely elation, set in a landscape both brutal and magnificent. Enlivened by folk talks, flights of fancy, and details of ranch and rural work, they juxtapose Wyoming’s traditional character and attitudes—confrontation of tough problems, prejudice, persistence in the face of difficulty—with the more benign values of the new west. Table of Contents: From Heart Songs: Stone City Bedrock Heart Songs From Close Range The Half-Skinned Steer The Mud Below People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water The Bunchgrass End of the World Brokeback Mountain From Bad Dirt The Hellhole The Indian Wars Refought The Trickle Down Effect What Kind of Furniture Would Jesus Pick? From Fine Just the Way It Is Family Man I’ve Always Loved This Place Them Old Cowboy Songs Tits Up in a Ditch New Stories Barbecue Master The Hadal Zone The Corn Woman, Her Husband, and Their Child