Painted Horses by Malcolm Brooks
Engrossing . . . The best novels are not just written but built--scene by scene, character by character--until a world emerges for readers to fall into. Painted Horses creates several worlds in a seamless and ambitious blend of history, romance, archaeology and nature. . . . Hard to forget. --Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today (4 out of 4 stars) In the mid-1950s, America was flush with prosperity and saw an unbroken line of progress clear to the horizon, while the West was still very much wild. In Painted Horses, now in paperback, a dauntless woman travels into that untamed landscape in an adventure that will change her life. Catherine Lemay is a young archaeologist who's come to Montana with a huge task before her--a canyon as deep as the devil's own appetites. Working ahead of a major dam project, she has one summer to prove nothing of historical value will be lost in the flood. From the moment she arrives, nothing is what she expects. John H is a former mustanger with an intuitive genius for breaking horses. A veteran of the U.S. Army's last mounted cavalry campaign, he lives a fugitive life, driven by pursuit of one last wild thing. John H inspires Catherine to see beauty in the stark landscape, and her heart opens to more than just the vanished past. Painted Horses sings a love song to the horseman's vanishing way of life and reminds us that love and ambition, tradition and progress, often make strange bedfellows. Extraordinary . . . Surprising and satisfying . . . Brooks has fashioned compelling and sympathetic protagonists. . . . John H--orphan, rail rider, cowboy, World War I veteran, Paris artist, canyon hermit--in particular, has a backstory that is both intimate and sweeping in a way that may remind readers of Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient. . . . Painted Horses is, after all, one of those big, old-fashioned novels where the mundane and the unlikely coexist.--Kent Black, Boston Globe Malcolm Brooks' novel has the hard thrill of the West, when it was still a new world, the tenderness of first love and the pain of knowledge. This book is a gripping, compulsively readable page-turner.--Amy Bloom, author of Away
Brooks, Malcolm: - Malcolm Brooks was born in East London and now resides with his wife in Queensland, Australia. They have three girls and a boy, and eight grandchildren. Malcolm's interests include painting, some writing and he plays the Saxophone.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780802121646 |
| ISBN 10 | 0802121640 |
| Title | Painted Horses |
| Author | Malcolm Brooks |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press |
| Year published | 2014-08-05 |
| Number of pages | 336 |
| Prizes | Commended for Indies Choice Book Awards (Debut Author) 2015 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |