Battleborn

Author(s): Claire Vaye Watkins

Short Stories

Like the work of Cormac McCarthy, Denis Johnson, Richard Ford, and Annie Proulx, "Battleborn "represents a near-perfect confluence of sensibility and setting, and the introduction of an exceptionally powerful and original literary voice. In each of these ten unforgettable stories, Claire Vaye Watkins writes her way fearlessly into the mythology of the American West, utterly reimagining it. Her characters orbit around the region's vast spaces, winning redemption despite - and often because of - the hardship and violence they endure. The arrival of a foreigner transforms the exchange of eroticism and emotion at a prostitution ranch. A prospecting hermit discovers the limits of his rugged individualism when he tries to rescue an abused teenager. Decades after she led her best friend into a degrading encounter in a Vegas hotel room, a woman feels the aftershock. Most bravely of all, Watkins takes on - and reinvents - her own troubled legacy in a story that emerges from the mayhem and destruction of Helter Skelter. Arcing from the sweeping and sublime to the minute and personal, from Gold Rush to ghost town to desert to brothel, the collection echoes not only in its title but also in its fierce, undefeated spirit the motto of her home state.


Product Information

Claire Vaye Watkins was born in Death Valley and raised in the Nevada desert. She has been named one of the National Book Foundation's "Five Under 35" fiction writers of 2012. Her work has appeared in "Granta," "The Paris Review," "The Hopkins Review," "Hobart," "One Story," "Ploughshares," and "Las Vegas Weekly." She is an assistant professor at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

General Fields

  • : 9781594488252
  • : Riverhead Books
  • : Riverhead Books
  • : 0.431
  • : 01 August 2012
  • : 208mm X 147mm X 28mm
  • : United States
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Claire Vaye Watkins
  • : Hardback
  • : 813.6
  • : 288