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WHISKEY WHEN WE'RE DRY

John Larison

From a blazing new voice in fiction, a gritty and lyrical American epic about a young woman who disguises herself as a boy and heads west

In the spring of 1885, seventeen-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, Whiskey When We're Dry is a stunning achievement, an epic as expansive as America itself--and a reckoning with the myths that are entwined with our history.

John Larison earned an MFA from Oregon State University in 2007. During the eight years he was writing Whiskey When We're Dry, he worked as a fly-fishing guide, a college writing instructor, and a freelance contributor to outdoor magazines.
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Book

Published 2018-08-01 by Viking

Comments

UK: No Exit Press

One of those [books] you get lost and absorbed in.

Larison gifts Jess with a strong voice to narrate her own story . his western epic has wide appeal.

Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa, the husband-and-wife writer/producer team best known for rebooting the Planet of the Apes movies, have optioned the novel for film! Silver and Jaffa have been producers on all three installments of the latest iteration of the popular Planet of the Apes franchise. They also co-wrote Jurassic World and collaborated on the new Avatar sequels, and they co-wrote the script for Disney's live-action version of Mulan, which is set for release in 2020. The couple optioned the novel with plans to write the screenplay themselves. "We are thrilled to be shepherding John's book "a character piece with heart and all the adventure and scope of an epic" Jaffa and Silver commented. "The unique, female voice and point of view makes Whiskey a story we are desperate to tell. It's timely, powerful, and unlike any other Western."

Told in -Jessilyn's hard-hitting voice, [WHISKEY WHEN WE'RE DRY] has the resonance of a high lonesome ballad.

Larison has developed a pitch-perfect voice for his intrepid heroine and populated the story with a lively crew of frontier types [This] is a winning tale of sexual identity in the Old West.