John Larison

From a blazing new voice in fiction comes a gritty and lyrical American epic about a young woman who disguises herself as a boy and heads west. In the spring of 1885, 17-year-old Jessilyn Harney finds herself orphaned and alone on her family’s homestead. Desperate to fend off starvation and predatory neighbors, she cuts off her hair, binds her chest, saddles her beloved mare, and sets off across the mountains to find her outlaw brother Noah and bring him home. A talented sharpshooter herself, Jess’s quest lands her in the employ of the territory’s violent, capricious Governor, whose militia is also hunting Noah — dead or alive. Wrestling with her brother’s outlaw identity, and haunted by questions about her own, Jess must outmaneuver those who underestimate her, ultimately rising to become a hero in her own right. Told in Jess’s wholly original and unforgettable voice, John Larison’s Whiskey When We’re Dry (Penguin) is a stunning achievement, an epic as expansive as America itself — and a reckoning with the myths that are entwined with our history.