The stories in Battleborn all unfold in Watkins's home state of Nevada, from down south in Nye County and Las Vegas, to Reno, Lake Tahoe, and the Blackrock Desert, the site of Burning Man. We are introduced to a very specific small town America, to those homes and lives off the highway - the ones travellers and writers usually drive past on their way to somewhere else. While the locations are ordinary, the characters and Watkins' telling of their lives are anything but. There is the man who finds a cache of letters, pills and a photograph abandoned by the side of the road and as he writes to the man he imagines left them behind, reveals moving truths about himself ('The Last Thing We Need'); the man in late middle age who finds a troubled, pregnant teen dying in the desert and, through her, begins to dream of regaining the family he lost ('Man-O-War'); the brothers caught in the early days of the gold rush ('The Diggings'); and the sisters unable to comfort each other following their mother's suicide ('Graceland'). And there is the first story ('Ghosts, Cowboys'), a semi-autobiographical account of a troubled - and famous - family history.

'Unsettling and compelling, Claire Vaye Watkins's writing has deservedly been likened to Cormac McCarthy and Annie Proulx for its fresh, foreboding approach to America's West... A spellbinding book' - Observer From Las Vegas to the Blackrock Desert, Vaye Watkins's stories of hardship, violence and redemption take the reader right to the heart of a truly American experience

About the Author
CLAIRE VAYE WATKINS is a Nevadan and a Presidential Fellow at Ohio State University. Her work has appeared in Hobart, the Hopkins Review, and Ploughshares.

Awards
Winner of The Story Prize 2013 (UK) and American Arts and Letters Prize 2013 (UK) and New York Public Library Young Lion's Award 2013 (UK). Short-listed for Frank O'Connor Short Stories Award 2013 (UK) and PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize 2013 (UK). Long-listed for Dylan Thomas Prize 2013 (UK).



Book Information
ISBN 9781847084873
Author Claire Vaye Watkins
Format Paperback
Page Count 304
Imprint Granta Books
Publisher Granta Books
Weight(grams) 214g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 19mm