The Hour of Lead
A Novel
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Lonesome Animals was named as a Best Book of 2012 by both The Seattle Times and Slate, a literary debut sparking with beautiful language set against the rugged landscape of 1920s Washington state. Holbert returns with The Hour of Lead, an epic family novel and coming of age story that is once again imbibed with the mythology of the west.
After losing both his twin and his father in a brutal, unexpected snowstorm, Matt Lawson must take over the family ranch. As his mother disappears into grief, Matt learns the hardest lesson the west has to teach: he is on his own. The necessity of work stabilizes young Matt against the pitfalls of first love with Wendy, the daughter of a local grocer, and their ragged end will sent Matt on a journey across the county, leaving Wendy to tend the ranch with local schoolteacher Linda Jefferson and her unwieldy son Lucky. It will take decades for Matt to learn his way back home, and that long journey will have great impact on all of those around him.
Invoking the same beautiful landscape and language of his critically–acclaimed debut, The Hour of Lead is a wider, more expansive novel, less violent but just as affecting, another important contribution to the literature of the west.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Holbert's second novel (after Lonesome Animals) is a dark, sad tale, set among the hardscrabble farms and ranches of eastern Washington state between 1918 and the early 1970s. The book vividly portrays the harsh lives of its unhappy characters in a crushing atmosphere of despair and violence. Young Matt Lawson loses his father and twin brother in a blizzard in 1918, leaving him to run the family ranch with his grief-stricken mother. As Matt matures, he courts Wendy, the grocer's daughter. But she shoots him one night, under somewhat murky circumstances. For 13 years he wanders the West fighting, gambling, and drinking, until he falls in with the hateful Jarms family. Under their bad influence, Matt becomes an accomplice in arson and multiple murders. Matt has a child and falls out with the Jarmses, escaping with his child back to eastern Washington, where he reunites with Wendy. Decades later, after they marry, raise his child, and have children of their own, Matt's past catches up with him. One of the Jarms boys comes for revenge, aided by Lucky Jefferson, a corrupt county sheriff and former rival for Wendy's attention. Jefferson is a brutal man who also has a long-simmering, very personal score to settle with Matt. Holbert's clever conclusion offers several surprising twists and some satisfaction, in this bleak story about people whose desperate pursuit of happiness is just a cruel illusion.
