Synopsis:
In the mid-1950s, America was flush with prosperity and saw an unbroken line of progress clear to the horizon, while the West was still very much wild. In this ambitious, incandescent debut, Malcolm Brooks animates that time and untamed landscape, in a tale of the modern and the ancient, of love and fate, and of heritage threatened by progress. Catherine Lemay is a young archaeologist on her way to Montana, with a huge task before her--a canyon "as deep as the devil's own appetites." Working ahead of a major dam project, she has one summer to prove nothing of historical value will be lost in the flood. From the moment she arrives, nothing is familiar--the vastness of the canyon itself mocks the contained, artifact-rich digs in post-Blitz London where she cut her teeth. And then there's John H, a former mustanger and veteran of the U.S. Army's last mounted cavalry campaign, living a fugitive life in the canyon. John H inspires Catherine to see beauty in the stark landscape, and her heart opens to more than just the vanished past. Painted Horses sends a dauntless young woman on a heroic quest, sings a love song to the horseman's vanishing way of life, and reminds us that love and ambition, tradition and the future, often make strange bedfellows. It establishes Malcolm Brooks as an extraordinary new talent.
Review:
Advance Praise for "Painted Horses"
""Painted Horses" is a wonderful novel full of horses, archeology, the new West, and two fascinating women. Malcolm Brooks should be lauded for this amazing debut. Very fine."--Jim Harrison, author of "Legends of the Fall" and "Brown Dog"
""Painted Horses" is the kind of finely tuned and literary love story they don't make much of anymore. Fans of Jamie Ford's novels, or Jim Harrison's, will be enthralled by Malcolm Brooks. He evokes a time and a place tinged by an autumnal sun, the brass thunderclap of things ending and beginning again. "Painted Horses" will carry you away."--Doug Stanton, author of the "New York Times" bestseller "Horse Soldiers"
"In "Painted Horses," Malcolm Brooks tells a spectacular story. An archeological adventuress searches for signs of a pre-conquest culture in the rugged depths of a Montana canyon while trying to fend off construction of a hydroelectric dam. Siding with inhabitants of the Crow Reservation, she thinks the dam, intended to flood a geological treasure, will be an ecological and cultural disaster. Real and painted horses, danger and defeat, and an enduring love affair. Kept me up through a few nights."--William Kittredge, author of "Hole in the Sky" and "The Willow Field"
"Malcolm Brooks' novel has the hard thrill of the West, when it was still a new world, the tenderness of first love and the pain of knowledge. This book is a gripping, compulsively readable page-turner."--Amy Bloom, author of "Away"
"I read Malcolm Brooks' new novel, "Painted Horses," with fascination, then amazement. Big, thrilling, poignant, astonishingly confident, it is the work of a master rather than that of a first-time novelist. With a story that moves from the bombed cities and battlefields of Europe to the wild badlands of Eastern Montana, and an eye for everything from the quality of a horse to the techniques of painting and archaeology, it will draw you in and leave you dreami
Advance Praise for "Painted Horses"
"Reminiscent of the fiery, lyrical and animated spirit of Cormac McCarthy's Borderlands trilogy, and the wisdom and elegance of Wallace Stegner's "Angle of Repose," "Painted Horses" is its own work, a big, old-fashioned and important novel."--Rick Bass, author of "All the Land to Hold Us"
"From its filmic geographical canvases and epochs to its mesmerizing close-ups of men, women and horses whose weaknesses, wounds, and powers are in plain paradoxical view, Malcolm Brooks' novel-making is always skilled and often breath-taking. There isn't a passing landscape, archaeological wonder, minor character, dialect, or wild horse in this story that isn't convincing. And the broken but magic horseman, John H, is for my money one of the great characters of Montana's estimable literature."--David James Duncan, author of "The Brothers K" and "The River Why"
""Painted Horses" is a wonderful novel full of horses, archeology, the new West, and two fascinating women. Malcolm Brooks should be lauded for this amazing debut. Very fine."--Jim Harrison, author of "Legends of the Fall" and "Brown Dog"
""Painted Horses" is the kind of finely tuned and literary love story they don't make much of anymore. Fans of Jamie Ford's novels, or Jim Harrison's, will be enthralled by Malcolm Brooks. He evokes a time and a place tinged by an autumnal sun, the brass thunderclap of things ending and beginning again. "Painted Horses" will carry you away."--Doug Stanton, author of the "New York Times" bestseller "Horse Soldiers"
"In "Painted Horses," Malcolm Brooks tells a spectacular story. An archeological adventuress searches for signs of a pre-conquest culture in the rugged depths of a Montana canyon while trying to fend off construction of a hydroelectric dam. Siding with inhabitants of the Crow Reservation, she thinks the dam, intended to flood a geological treasure, will be an ecological and cultural disaster. Real and paintedn
Advance Praise for "Painted Horses"
"Brooks delivers an authentic story, examining in gripping, page-turning prose what it means to live in the West. . . . An outstanding debut novel that will linger in the reader's mind."--Donna Bettencourt, "Library Journal" (starred review)
"Reminiscent of the fiery, lyrical and animated spirit of Cormac McCarthy's Borderlands trilogy, and the wisdom and elegance of Wallace Stegner's "Angle of Repose," "Painted Horses" is its own work, a big, old-fashioned and important novel."--Rick Bass, author of "All the Land to Hold Us"
"From its filmic geographical canvases and epochs to its mesmerizing close-ups of men, women and horses whose weaknesses, wounds, and powers are in plain paradoxical view, Malcolm Brooks' novel-making is always skilled and often breath-taking. There isn't a passing landscape, archaeological wonder, minor character, dialect, or wild horse in this story that isn't convincing. And the broken but magic horseman, John H, is for my money one of the great characters of Montana's estimable literature."--David James Duncan, author of "The Brothers K" and "The River Why"
""Painted Horses" is a wonderful novel full of horses, archeology, the new West, and two fascinating women. Malcolm Brooks should be lauded for this amazing debut. Very fine."--Jim Harrison, author of "Legends of the Fall" and "Brown Dog"
""Painted Horses" is the kind of finely tuned and literary love story they don't make much of anymore. Fans of Jamie Ford's novels, or Jim Harrison's, will be enthralled by Malcolm Brooks. He evokes a time and a place tinged by an autumnal sun, the brass thunderclap of things ending and beginning again. "Painted Horses" will carry you away."--Doug Stanton, author of the "New York Times" bestseller "Horse Soldiers"
"In "Painted Horses," Malcolm Brooks tells a spectacular story. An archeological adventuress searches for signs of a pre-conquest culture in the rugged depths of ai
Advance Praise for "Painted Horses"
"Brooks's debut captures the grandeur of the American West."--"Publishers" Weekly (starred review)
"Reminiscent of the fiery, lyrical and animated spirit of Cormac McCarthy's Border trilogy, and the wisdom and elegance of Wallace Stegner's "Angle of Repose," "Painted Horses" is its own work, a big, old-fashioned and important novel."--Rick Bass, author of "All the Land to Hold Us"
"Malcolm Brooks' novel has the hard thrill of the West, when it was still a new world, the tenderness of first love and the pain of knowledge. This book is a gripping, compulsively readable page-turner."--Amy Bloom, author of "Away"
"Brooks delivers an authentic story, examining in gripping, page-turning prose what it means to live in the West. . . . An outstanding debut novel that will linger in the reader's mind."--Donna Bettencourt, "Library Journal" (starred review)
"From its filmic geographical canvases and epochs to its mesmerizing close-ups of men, women and horses whose weaknesses, wounds, and powers are in plain paradoxical view, Malcolm Brooks' novel-making is always skilled and often breath-taking. There isn't a passing landscape, archaeological wonder, minor character, dialect, or wild horse in this story that isn't convincing. And the broken but magic horseman, John H, is for my money one of the great characters of Montana's estimable literature."--David James Duncan, author of "The Brothers K" and "The River Why"
""Painted Horses" is evidence that the many-peopled, colorific, panoramic, fully-wraparound, pull-you-in-by-the-heels, big-questions, literarily deft 'Great American Novel' still lives."--Carolyn Chute, author of "The Beans of Egypt, Maine" and "Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves "
""Painted Horses" is a wonderful novel full of horses, archeology, the new West, and two fascinating women. Malcolm Brooks should be lauded for this amazing debut. Very fine."--Jim Harrison, aut
Praise for "Painted Horses"
"Engrossing . . . The best novels are not just written but built--scene by scene, character by character--until a world emerges for readers to fall into. "Painted Horses" creates several worlds." --Bob Minzesheimer, "USA Today" (4 out of 4 stars)
"Extraordinary . . . both intimate and sweeping in a way that may remind readers of Michael Ondaatje's "The English Patient." . . . "Painted Horses" is, after all, one of those big, old-fashioned novels where the mundane and the unlikely coexist."--Kent Black, "Boston Globe"
"Evocative . . . a sprawling story about horses, Montana, Native American culture, archaeology and the development of the West . . . The reader is right there with John H. as he tightens the cinch on his saddle and moves on. . . . Brooks' prose rings true and borders on poetic when he tackles the biggest things in his novel: themes of love, what one is willing to fight for, what to give up for something held more dear and, in the end, what it takes to recover from what has been lost."--John B. Saul, "The Seattle Times"
"Malcolm Brooks' novel has the hard thrill of the West, when it was still a new world, the tenderness of first love and the pain of knowledge. This book is a gripping, compulsively readable page-turner."--Amy Bloom, author of "Away"
"Painted Horses reads like a cross between Charles Frazier's "Cold Mountain" and Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms," with a pinch of Michael Ondaatje's "The English Patient" for good measure. . . . An earnest, romantic novel."--William J. Cobb, "The Dallas Morning News"
"Reminiscent of the fiery, lyrical and animated spirit of Cormac McCarthy's Border trilogy, and the wisdom and elegance of Wallace Stegner's "Angle of Repose," "Painted Horses" is its own work, a big, old-fashioned and important novel."--Rick Bass, author of "All the Land to Hold Us"
"There is both great beauty and muted sorrow in Brooks's descriptions of the wild Montana landscape and John H's vanishing way of life. . . . "Painted Horses" vividly evokes an earlier time, a place and a way of being that is at the cusp of great change. In his gift for the language of horses and the culture of horsemen, Brooks will inevitably recall Cormac McCarthy. And like Ivan Doig in "Bucking the Sun," he mines one of the darker veins in the mythology of the American West"-- Molly Gloss, "The Washington Post"
""Painted Horses" is evidence that the many-peopled, colorific, panoramic, fully-wraparound, pull-you-in-by-the-heels, big-questions, literarily deft 'Great American Novel' still lives."--Carolyn Chute, author of "The Beans of Egypt, Maine" and "Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves "
"Inspiring . . . Brooks, a Montana native, skillfully captures the vastness and austerity of his homeland, revealing both its harshness and hidden wealth. Already compared to Cormac McCarthy's The Border Trilogy, I found Brooks' landscape writing more lyrical and elegant. . . . A love song to the Western frontier, "Painted Horses" is a new, truly American, work of art."--Leigh Baldwin, "San Antonio Current"
""Painted Horses" is a wonderful novel full of horses, archeology, the new West, and two fascinating women. Malcolm Brooks should be lauded for this amazing debut. Very fine."--Jim Harrison, author of "Legends of the Fall" and "Brown Dog"
"Ambitious and affecting . . . A sweeping and dramatic saga . . . Brooks takes what could be a simple story and brings in a little romance and reveals the deep contradictions that are at the heart of Americans' reverence for the West, until that reverence comes into conflict with progress. This is an important book but also an entertaining one, a book that is destined to form part of the canon of Montana literature as it preserves a piece of the past by exposing not just myth but deeper truth."-- Erin H. Turner, "Big Sky Journal"
"With a startlingly clear view into a past when the American West was still wild, Brooks transports readers into a breathtaking, ruthless landscape. . . . Brooks offers contrasts between past and future, morals and convention, intermingled with a breathless love for one of America's last great wildernesses. All of the adventure and romance of the classic western novel awaits readers here, made even more vibrant by a tinge of bittersweet nostalgia. Glowing with spirit, Brooks's debut will entrance anyone who has ever felt the call of the West."--Jaclyn Fulwood, "Shelf Awareness"
""Painted Horses" is a wonderfully told story, and each rich detail shows a fascinating piece of the American West."--Jane Krebs, Bookreporter.com
"Brooks's debut captures the grandeur of the American West."--"Publishers" Weekly (starred review)
"From its filmic geographical canvases and epochs to its mesmerizing close-ups of men, women and horses whose weaknesses, wounds, and powers are in plain paradoxical view, Malcolm Brooks' novel-making is always skilled and often breath-taking. There isn't a passing landscape, archaeological wonder, minor character, dialect, or wild horse in this story that isn't convincing. And the broken but magic horseman, John H, is for my money one of the great characters of Montana's estimable literature."--David James Duncan, author of "The Brothers K" and "The River Why"
"Brooks delivers an authentic story, examining in gripping, page-turning prose what it means to live in the West. . . . An outstanding debut novel that will linger in the reader's mind."--Donna Bettencourt, "Library Journal" (starred review)
"Malcolm Brooks has the same intuitive understanding of women that his character John H has of horses. "Painted Horses" is a beautiful, sensual, authentic novel. A western novel that is about so much more than the West, it is an exquisite, enthralling debut."--Lily King, author of "Euphoria"
"Set in grandly imposing Montana in the mid-1950s and weaving together Old World and New World archaeology while vividly portraying an American West now lost, this debut also works in miniature as it deftly portrays two characters who become unlikely allies. . . . A bold, beautiful read."--Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal" ("Barbara's Picks)
""Painted Horses" is the kind of finely tuned and literary love story they don't make much of anymore. Fans of Jamie Ford's novels, or Jim Harrison's, will be enthralled by Malcolm Brooks. He evokes a time and a place tinged by an autumnal sun, the brass thunderclap of things ending and beginning again. "Painted Horses" will carry you away."--Doug Stanton, author of the "New York Times" bestseller "Horse Soldiers"
"Set in an American West of the 1950s but carrying vestiges of the nineteenth century, and with Indian artifacts and the ancestry of wild horses going back even earlier, much of this novel, like its milieu, has a timeless feel. . . . Though some readers will rightly find in Brooks' theme suggestions of Jim Harrison or Comac McCarthy, the lengthy wartime flashbacks nicely recall vintage Hemingway. . . . Its vividly drawn atmosphere and strong characters will keep the reader engaged."--Mark Levine, "Booklist"
"In "Painted Horses," Malcolm Brooks tells a spectacular story in which an archeological adventuress searches for signs of a pre-conquest culture in the rugged depths of a Montana canyon ahead of construction of a hydroelectric dam. Real and painted horses, danger and defeat, and an enduring love affair. Kept me up through a few nights."--William Kittredge, author of "Hole in the Sky" and "The Willow Field"
""Painted Horses" is a gorgeous, luminous song of a novel. Malcolm Brooks not only knows landscape and history and the blood that stains it around the world, he also knows lost tribes that are merely hidden, ancient ways that yet reside forever in the few who choose to listen. This is a stunning debut and a novel that gracefully stands up to comparison with Harrison's "Legends of the Fall" and McCarthy's "All the Pretty Horses." But as such...
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