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Vendor
Liepman Literary Agency
Marc Koralnik
Original language
English

THE DEATH AND LIFE OF STROTHER PURCELL

Ian Weir

For readers of Ron Rash, Cormac McCarthy and fans of the HBO hit series Deadwood comes THE DEATH AND LIFE OF STROTHER PURCELL a frontier Western wrapped-up in a Southern Gothic mystery.
SAN FRANCISCO, 1892. The old Gold Rush capital is rollicking toward the twentieth century. Young Will Hearst is creating a modern media empire. Wyatt Earp, the retired but not-yet-legendary frontier lawman, is trying to reinvent himself—and get rich—as a Bay Area property developer. And Barry Weaver, a hack writer of frontier dime-novels, ends up on a self-destructive spree and a night in the drunk tank where he encounters a homeless one-eyed derelict who turns out to be the fabled Strother Purcell—or what remains of him. Weaver sees his opportunity. He will write this story. All it requires is a final act—a true-life climax that will combine redemption and tragedy on a scale commensurate with Purcell's stature, not to mention Weaver's narrative aspirations.

What unfolds is an archetypal saga of obsession, treachery, lost love, murder and revenge. A deadpan revisionist Western, refracted though the lens of a Southern Gothic revenge tragedy, THE DEATH AND LIFE OF STROTHER PURCELL is a novel about the power of the past...and the lengths we'll go in order to invent it..

IAN WEIR is a screenwriter, playwright and novelist. His debut novel Daniel O'Thunder, published in 2009, was a finalist for four awards: the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best First Book Award, the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and the Canadian Authors Association's Award for Fiction. Among his extensive television credits, he was the writer and executive producer of the acclaimed crime thriller Dragon Boys, a CBC miniseries that first aired in 2007. His stage plays have been produced across Canada and in the U.S. and U.K., and he is the author of ten radio dramas. He has won two Geminis, four Leos, a Jessie and the Writers Guild of Canada Canadian Screenwriting Award. His last novel, Will Starling, was longlisted for the Dublin IMPAC and published in Canada and the U.S.
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Published by Goose Lane

Comments

This is an outstanding novel, alternately tragic and funny, grim and joyous, about spilled blood, shattered lives, and the redemptive power of both the smallest good deed and the grand selfless act.

Lemeac Editeur