Book summary

Jonathan Raban, an Englishman, explores the harrowing reality behind the dream of the American West. Using the accounts of homesteaders, he evokes the realities of their disappointments, exploding our idea of the West as a realm of stable, settled communities and revealing a much less wholesome landscape peopled by loners and sociopaths. This book was nominated for the 1996 National Book Critics Circle Award in nonfiction.

Media reviews

"'Raban is searching and compassionate....And he is at all times eloquent. His writer's zeal is the zeal of a convert to America, but his vision of those who wished to win the West but mostly lost it is unimpaired and true."