What Came West
A Novel
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What Came West
Pre-order Now for £23.39
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Narrated by:
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By:
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Josh Weil
About this listen
“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 White Oleander and Chimes of a Lost Cathedral
Sierra Nevada, 1840s, just before the Gold Rush ignites. Silas Hall has never belonged anywhere except the wild. Bullied as a child and uneasy even within his own family, he finds brief solace in love and fatherhood before the pull of the frontier overwhelms him. One day he heads west, chasing a life that might finally make sense.
What follows is a swift, pulse-pounding journey into the mountains, where Silas becomes one of the first white settlers to cross into the Sierra Nevada. He forges a precarious peace with the Indigenous people who live there—until the Gold Rush crashes in with violent force. As thousands flood the region, the balance shatters, and Silas commits murder, a desperate act that alters the course of every life around him, including his own.
Taut and propulsive, What Came West is told in two parallel voices—one a tense, third-person account of Silas on the run, and the other a confessional letter from Silas to the son he left behind—and confronts many different forms of American inheritance, in all its danger, emotional voltage, and mythic momentum. Weil’s masterpiece is a fierce, heart-driven portrait of an outsider racing toward belonging and barreling headlong into consequence.
Critic reviews
“Like a patient pine or ancient mineral, Josh Weil watches history and humanity in What Came West, with an attention that feels as monumental as the wilderness and wildness he transcendently portrays.” —Samantha Hunt, author of The Unwritten Book
“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 and Chimes of a Lost Cathedral
“There’s solace, patience, lush beauty, 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, Red Moon, The Dead Lands, and Thrill Me
“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
“Josh Weil has created that rare thing: a perfect literary western. He joins the good company of Thomas Berger, Charles Portis and Larry McMurtry but brings his own vision to the American West….Weil has found a landscape and character worthy of his attention and talent. It's a tour de force, an amazing accomplishment by a writer at the height of his power.” —Tom Franklin, Edgar Award winner and author of New York Times bestseller 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 and Chimes of a Lost Cathedral
“There’s solace, patience, lush beauty, 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, Red Moon, The Dead Lands, and Thrill Me
“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
“Josh Weil has created that rare thing: a perfect literary western. He joins the good company of Thomas Berger, Charles Portis and Larry McMurtry but brings his own vision to the American West….Weil has found a landscape and character worthy of his attention and talent. It's a tour de force, an amazing accomplishment by a writer at the height of his power.” —Tom Franklin, Edgar Award winner and author of New York Times bestseller Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
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