Liar's Moon — Phillip Kimball

A boldly imagined novel of the West in the years following the Civil War.It's 1852 and a young girl in Texas is kidnapped by Indians. It's 1859 and two toddlers fall off a buckboard heading west: rumor has it they survived and are being raised by coyotes. It's 1874 and a young brave has a vision he is invincible: he will lead his people to disaster. It's 1879 and a black Mississippi sharecropper is terrorized into making the migration west. It's 1890 and we have arrived at Wounded Knee: the West has been subdued.There have been many versions of how the West was won, but Liar's Moon, with its coruscating vision and its rowdy vitality, outpaces them all. As it deromanticizes our greatest story, the novel shows how history slid into leg to become-in little more than thirty years-the defining myth of America. With its mix of songs and laments, tall tales, hearsay, and history, Liar's Moon is a true American original, a subversive match for the energy, diversity, and lies that have stitched this nation together.