Native

by William Haywood Henderson

(Dutton, Plume)

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Blue Parker is a twenty-three-year-old ranch foreman in a Wyoming mountain town, high in a valley between the Wind River Range and the Absarokas. He treasures the immense solitude on the mountains, yet he begins to yearn for the love of a kindred spirit. When he hires a new ranch hand, Sam, his longing seems about to be fulfilled. But then Gilbert, a Native American from the nearby reservation, passes through town and dances his way among the men, drawing Blue and Sam into his struggles to reclaim ancient customs that have been subverted or destroyed. With a sure sense of place and a keen sensitivity to the unspoken yet unbearable tensions that shape its characters, this superb debut novel offers a subtle portrait of three men caught between past and present, in a majestic landscape that transcends both loneliness and love.

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“Henderson’s moody, near mystical evocation of the Western heart owes more to the spirit of The Scarlet Letter than to Louis L’Amour. Native is a cowboy story unlike any other.”
     —Boston Globe

“An intensely American novel…finely wrought. With vivid, startling characters and a graceful evocation of the land and nature.”
     —Village Voice

“William Henderson is quite simply the best young writer I know about in America right now.”
     —Edmund White

“I have never seen the American cowboy and his natural environment so intimately drawn. Henderson’s poetic hand slowly, surely, reveals to us the mystery: as we are the caretakers of the earth, so then we are, indeed, the caretakers of our souls.”
     —Tom Spanbauer

“A finely textured Western narrative.”
     —Kirkus Reviews

“Beautifully recounts the story of a man’s loss of home, occupation, and friends because of the given circumstances of his life. It is a subtly written tale, carried off with great finesse.”
     —Gilbert Sorrentino

“With Native, Henderson instantly joins the company of [Edward] Abbey, Tom Spanbauer, and Larry McMurtry as a writer with a unique and compelling vision of the modern West and a talent to put that vision into words.”
     —Echo magazine

“Explosive…an incredible first novel by what promises to be a major voice in American literature.”
     —San Francisco Bay Times

“Dazzling…reveals the gift and power of an exceptional writer.”
     —Advocate