John Larison - Whiskey When We're Dry — at Politics and Prose at Union Market
Now available in paperback, Larison’s cinematic western delivers plenty of adventure and bravado in a tough, challenging landscape. It also overturns standard assumptions of the West with its observations of late 1880s race, class, and gender issues and its sharp, no-nonsense female hero. Orphaned at seventeen when her father dies, Jessilyn disguises herself as a man and leaves her homestead to track down her brother. An outlaw, Noah is also wanted by a territorial governor who hires Jess to help, though she’s troubled by the clash between her real and apparent identities as well as all the male swagger around her.