Annie Proulx Stories

With a new introduction by Colm Toibin.

From one of the greatest story writers of our time, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, two O. Henry Prizes, and the celebrated author of Brokeback Mountain, comes a collection that includes three new stories and the most iconic stories of Annie Proulx’s stunning, decades-long career.

Annie Proulx’s “gritty and gleaming stories” (New York Times Book Review) are about loneliness, violence, desperation, and the wrong kinds of love. In “The Mud Below,” a rodeo rider’s obsession marks the deepening fissures between his family life and self-imposed isolation. In “The Half-Skinned Steer,” an elderly fool drives west to the range he grew up on for his brother’s funeral and dies a mile from home. In the masterpiece, “Brokeback Mountain,” the difficult affair between two cowboys survives everything but the world’s intolerance.

These are stories of hard times, and unlikely elation, set in a landscape both brutal and magnificent. Enlivened by folk talks, flights of fancy, and details of ranch and rural work, they juxtapose Wyoming’s traditional character and attitudes—confrontation of tough problems, prejudice, persistence in the face of difficulty—with the more benign values of the new west.

Table of Contents:
From Heart Songs:
Stone City
Bedrock
Heart Songs

From Close Range
The Half-Skinned Steer
The Mud Below
People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water
The Bunchgrass End of the World
Brokeback Mountain

From Bad Dirt
The Hellhole
The Indian Wars Refought
The Trickle Down Effect
What Kind of Furniture Would Jesus Pick?

From Fine Just the Way It Is
Family Man
I’ve Always Loved This Place
Them Old Cowboy Songs
Tits Up in a Ditch

New Stories
Barbecue Master
The Hadal Zone
The Corn Woman, Her Husband, and Their Child