“Alyson Hagy writes about the historic and contemporary
ghosts of Wyoming as if she has lived there for two hundred years. . . . She
inhabits each character completely, tells the hard and heartbreaking tales of
their barely redeemed lives with compassion and clarity, in prose as lyric and
arresting as the great state itself.”
AN UNSENTIMENTAL VISION OF
THE WEST, NEW AND OLD, COMES TO LIFE IN A
GRITTY NEW COLLECTION OF STORIES BY
THE AUTHOR OF SNOW,
ASHES
“Sharp, mournful tales and dead-on yarns. Hagy knows Wyoming
well, her stern weathers and defiant beauty and patient ruthlessness. She knows
too how this land fashions and tests her ghosts, both living and long gone.”
—JOY WILLIAMS
In Ghosts of Wyoming, Alyson Hagy explores the hardscrabble lives and
terrain of America’s least-populous state. Beyond the tourist destinations of
Jackson Hole and Yellowstone lies a less familiar and wilder frontier defined
by the tension wrought by abundance and scarcity.
A young runaway with a big secret slips across the state
border and steals a collie pup from the Meeker County fairgrounds. A chorus of
trainmen details a day spent laying rail across the Wyoming Territory, while
contemporary voices describe life in the oil and gas fields near Gillette. A traveling
preacher is caught up in a deadly skirmish between cattle rustlers and ranchers
on his way from Rawlins to the Indian reservation on the Popo Agie River.
Locals and activists clash when a tourist makes an archaeological discovery
near Hoodoo Mountain.
With spirited, lyrical prose, Hagy expertly weaves together
Wyoming’s color pioneer and speculator history with the not-often-heard voices
of petroleum workers, thrill-seeking rock climbers, and those left behind by
the latest boom and bust.
“We’re in luck again out west. Here’s another first-rate
storyteller. Alyson Hagy knows our lingo, our lands and people, our heartbreaks
and glories, and our tragedies and sustaining myths, and how each runs through
the others. Read and enjoy. Hope for more.”
