Painted Horses

ISBN: 0802123813

Author: Brooks, Malcolm

Condition: New

Engrossing . . . The best novels are not just written but builtscene by scene, character by characteruntil 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 whos come to Montana with a huge task before hera canyon as deep as the devils 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. Armys 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 horsemans 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 Horphan, rail rider, cowboy, World War II veteran, Paris artist, canyon hermitin particular, has a backstory that is both intimate and sweeping in a way that may remind readers of Michael Ondaatjes 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 GlobeMalcolm 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