Millennia
ago, Ginny’s family farm was all grass and rock and wild horses. A thousand
years hence, it’ll all be peacefully underwater. In the matter-of-fact here and
now, though, it’s a hotbed of lust and resentment, because Ginny’s just cheated
on her husband with the man who lives next door.
When a
crowd of locals—including Ginny’s bitter sister Ella—turn up to help out on the
farm, a day of chores turns into a night of serious drinking, and then of
brutal, communal retribution. By morning, Ginny’s been left for dead. But dead
is the one thing she isn’t. With a stolen horse and rifle, she escapes into the
mountains, and a small posse of her tormentors gears up to give chase—to bring
her 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 of
philosophical 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 the
nature of storytelling onto their heads, with an eye to the cosmic as well as
the comic. It urges us to write our stories anew—if we want to avoid becoming
beasts ourselves.