Vancouver, BC: Talonbooks, (2017). First edition - The author's first novel, a finalist for the 2015 Governor Generals Literary Award, and winner of the 2015 First Novel Award at the Festival du Premier Roman de Chambry in France. Set in the American West in the years after the Civil War, a West which is "an amalgamation of equal parts post-apocalyptic wasteland and detail-riddled realism. . . The novel opens on a family homestead in the now ghost town of Paria, Utah with the description of 'three long guns . . . in a place of honour to the left of the chimney piece.' The central characters include the Reverend Aaron, an atheist preacher, whose hands have been cut off; the outlaw Charles Teasdale; Russian Bill, a sharpshooting cowboy claiming to be of Russian royalty; Pearl Guthrie, an adventurous young woman on a misguided search for the perfect husband; and the Matador, a Mexican bullfighter turned bounty hunter. They weave in and out of each others lives, moving from frontier town to frontier town." Translated from the French by W. Donald Wilson. 312 pp. ISBN: 978-1772011241.