Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2

Eleven stories set in and around the mythical yet all too real town of Elk Tooth and its three bars. The sky is a hard but cheerful blue and, while the old ranch way of life is disappearing, a certain streak of tenacity and resilient toughness persists. A hellhole gobbles up poachers; the Indian Wars are re-fought; urban Eastern newcomers disastrously try to settle in; and junk from the dump takes on a mystical life of its own. The characters are familiar to anyone who has spent time at watering holes in the Intermountain West. They all possess, or are possessed by, the goofy strangeness that comes over people who live and work in an unforgiving land, and their stories combine a downright bleak awareness of the damage that loss can wreak with laugh-out-loud hilarity.