Come West and See: Stories

by Maxim Loskutoff

Overview

An NPR Best Book of 2018

"Devastating.…Grows increasingly bizarre and haunting until it’s left an indelible mark." —Janet Maslin, New York Times

In an isolated region of Idaho, Montana, and eastern Oregon, an armed occupation of a wildlife refuge escalates into civil war. Against this backdrop, Maxim Loskutoff shatters the myths of the West: a lonesome trapper falls in love with a bear; a newly married woman hatches a plot to murder a tree; and an unemployed millworker joins a militia after returning home. Written with “blade-sharp prose” (Electric Literature), the twelve stories in this debut collection expose the simmering rage and resentments of small-town America “with extraordinary eloquence and compassion” (National Book Review).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393357011
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	08/06/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Maxim Loskutoff is the award-winning author of Old King, Ruthie Fear and Come West and See. His stories and essays have appeared in numerous periodicals, including the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Ploughshares, and GQ. He lives in the Rocky Mountains of western Montana.

Editorial Reviews

"Like postcards from a truthful place, Come West and See holds a mirror up to America—a brutal, ferocious image that carries a beauty unto itself."

Craig Johnson

"It is impossible not to be struck by the tenderness in Loskutoff’s writing: the sublime setting; the vivid characters, so precise and unique it seems like he dreamed them up whole and fully fledged; the intricacies of love, fear, and fatigue that resonate so strongly they left me actually breathless."

Ploughshares

"Violence waits for its moment in the quietest of lives, and Loskutoff shows us that we had better face it and do our best to understand it. A tough, human work of fiction."

Tom Bouman

"Fans of Cormac McCarthy and Russell Banks will find plenty to like in Loskutoff’s fresh voice and keen instincts for drama."

LA Weekly

"[A] visceral debut.… Come West and See almost invites comparison with books in the vein of Juan Rulfo’s enigmatic midcentury masterpiece Pedro Páramo.… Whereas Rulfo’s novel is full of corpses, Loskutoff’s characters are very much alive."

Michigan Quarterly Review - Adam DePollo

"A new kind of American Western."

NPR - Jolie Myers

"Maxim Loskutoff highlights life on the other side— the disenfranchised, angry, sullen, rebellious, gun-packing side. See them attempt to create a homeland of their own."

William Kittredge

"A ferocious love letter to the forgotten and the scorned."

Matt Gallagher

03/26/2018
Loskutoff sets his slightly disturbing debut collection in an alternate present during a new American Civil War led by libertarian Western separatists. As the rebellion in Montana hovers in the background, the author explores the motivations of those who sign up as well as those who become trapped in indecision. The media-shy widow of one of the first rebels to die tries to explain the cause to her children in “Daddy Swore an Oath.” Another mother in “We’re in This Together You Know, God” recounts the discovery of her daughter’s tormenting of the family’s horses. Socially awkward 20-something Derek frets over his snake’s loss of appetite and his only friend moving away in “Prey.” In “Umpqua,” Russ declares his support for the rebellion to obscure his inadequacy after sparks fly between his girlfriend and a strapping Midwestern tourist. And in “Harvest,” a former soldier and his dead comrade’s preteen daughter hide out from federal troops in an underground bunker, though his motivations are less protective than they seem. A persistent focus on sexuality narrows the range of relationships throughout. Nevertheless, Loskutoff’s collection presents a chilling glimpse into a plausible future of ravaged American disunion. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Narrators Wendy King and John McLain do fine work capturing the cadences and intonations of the sometimes-enigmatic characters in these linked stories. All but one of these fictions occurs in a frightening mythic construct called the Redoubt, loosely located in Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. The narrations are tricky as many of the characters talk and think in survivalist, militia-inspired, apocalyptic ways that could easily devolve into caricature. The able narrators ensure that they don’t. Two production quibbles: Sometimes the stories almost slide together—blunt ending slamming into hard-edged beginning. Also, the opening story about a nineteenth-century loner who falls in love with a grizzly seems an off note in an otherwise engaging collection set in a dystopian West. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2018 - AudioFile

Narrators Wendy King and John McLain do fine work capturing the cadences and intonations of the sometimes-enigmatic characters in these linked stories. All but one of these fictions occurs in a frightening mythic construct called the Redoubt, loosely located in Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. The narrations are tricky as many of the characters talk and think in survivalist, militia-inspired, apocalyptic ways that could easily devolve into caricature. The able narrators ensure that they don’t. Two production quibbles: Sometimes the stories almost slide together—blunt ending slamming into hard-edged beginning. Also, the opening story about a nineteenth-century loner who falls in love with a grizzly seems an off note in an otherwise engaging collection set in a dystopian West. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2018 - AudioFile

2018-02-20
Pensive, sometimes-explosive stories of life in the rural Northwest in a debut collection.A specter hangs over Loskutoff's stories, that of a rural outback in which the federal government is decidedly an enemy and live fire is exchanged. How you feel about some of his characters ("She was a neighbor, a mother. An American. A widow") may well depend on your take on such things as the Malheur National Wildlife Reserve and Ruby Ridge; certainly some of Loskutoff's characters are committed to the idea that they are unwelcome strangers in their own land, if with peculiar ideas about what their own land constitutes. "A friend of mine got shot dead yesterday," says one character matter-of-factly, adding, "Took seven feds with them." Perhaps less controversial is Loskutoff's vision of a place in which nature is very close at hand and the violence attendant is even closer: His characters, particularly men, are often likened to beasts ("Carston made a grunting noise like a wounded animal….He was big enough that he could stomp them both, done real damage, but it wasn't in him"), and in the troubling opening story, the protagonist, having evidenced some sympathy for a grizzly bear with whom he's sharing territory, kills a cub and wears its skin as a kind of savage declaration of who's in charge. Loskutoff acknowledges the guidance of his former writing teacher David Foster Wallace, but there is not much of Wallace's complex layering (or a single footnote, for that matter) in these tales; instead, the governing tutelary spirit is more on the order of Raymond Carver with a little Bill Kittredge and, particularly in that first story, the early Barry Lopez thrown in for leavening. In any event, Loskutoff writes a good sentence, has a fine eye for the meaningful detail, and spins stories that, while certainly not for every taste, are fully realized.A welcome arrival with the promise of good work to come.

Kirkus Reviews