Don't go to Coyote Hill, they'd told him
in the last town. They got they-selves
some black magic out there. It ain't natural. They's things that hunt out in
that desert, demons and what-not. And they don't care none if it's beast or man
they kill ...
Heath
Lowrance knows how to start a story, doesn’t he? This collection of linked
tales centers on the enigmatic Hawthorne, a gray-eyed man on a tall black horse
who has been known by other names at other times and places. He is a man who
can be touched by innocence, but not by beauty and his path is a lonely one. And
a bloody one. Because where Hawthorne goes, death follows.
If your only
experience with the “weird western” genre is the movie Cowboys and Aliens, you’re in for a treat. These stories are filled
with monsters, both supernatural and human, and after you read the story, “the
Spider Tribe,” you will never look at arachnids the same way again. Lowrance
braids his stories together out of bits and pieces of western myth—the lone
avenger, coyote legends—and ties them off with a modern, blood-soaked
sensibility that is tough and taut. When he writes a fight scene, you feel the
fist impact the flesh and get the idea that maybe the writer’s been in a fight
or two himself. Do yourself a favor and read Hawthorne while you’re waiting for the Dark Tower miniseries to air. Enjoy the
underpinnings of the horror and the atmospherics of the land that Hawthorne
inhabits. And enjoy being scared to death. When the gray-eyed man with the
scarred face shows up, things get weird.
I interviewed Heath Lowrance four years ago. (I know a good writer when I read one.) You can read that interview here.
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