NOVEMBER 2018 - AudioFile
Narrator Sophie Amoss taps into her Southern roots to give voice to young, bright, and willful Jess Harney—a 16-year-old orphan who cuts her hair, puts on pants, and takes up a six-shooter to make her way in the world. It’s well after the Civil War, and when her father dies and the homestead falls into disrepair, Jess uses her trick-shot skills to talk her way into being a member of the governor’s personal guard, all the while hoping to track down her outlaw brother. The action is bloody and unyielding, and the language is colorful and evocative. Amoss revels in telling the story of a girl who finds freedom in impersonating a man and thinking on her feet. B.P. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
06/25/2018
True Grit meets Yentl in Larison’s evocative debut. In the post-Civil War West, 17-year-old Jessilyn Harney’s father dies, leaving their financially strapped homestead in her hands. She decides that the only way of saving it is to track down her errant older brother, Noah—who left several years back and has since become a notorious outlaw—and convince him to return home. Since it’s dangerous to be a woman traveling alone, she chooses to masquerade as a boy. Using her talent as a sharpshooter to catch the eye of the state governor, Jessilyn joins his militia on the hunt for her brother, who is regarded as a folk hero by many. Passing herself off as a boy causes all sorts of problems for Jessilyn, who has to negotiate relationships with brothel girls, a closeted militiaman, the governor’s daughter, and, later, a female outlaw. Finally reunited with her brother, Jessilyn holes up with his wild bunch only to be hunted down by the militiamen she once served with. Larison has developed a pitch-perfect voice for his intrepid heroine and populated the story with a lively crew of frontier types. Although overlong and sluggish in places, this is a winning tale of sexual identity in the Old West. (Aug.)
From the Publisher
Praise for Whiskey When We’re Dry:
“Mulan meets Deadwood in a Wild West novel narrated by its straight-shooting heroine.” –O Magazine
“A smooth yet bracing Western yarn that both celebrates and subverts the romance of the Old West through more complex contemporary perspectives on gender and race…. As in Charles Portis’ classic “True Grit,” much of the appeal of the telling hangs upon the distinct voice of its narrator, and Jesse’s narration combines folksy vernacular with an easy loping gait.” —Seattle Times
“A tale of the Old West with a fresh perspective.”—New York Post
“Larison’s neo-Western, about a young woman who heads West while disguised as a boy, is already generating plenty of buzz: film and TV rights have already been acquired by the team behind the Planet of the Apes reboot.” —Entertainment Weekly
“Larison writes with unrelenting momentum and thoughtfully explores questions of gender identity, power, and violence.” —Outside Magazine
“[A] sweeping saga… John Larison’s new book plunges readers into the American West while simultaneously reimagining the mythic frontier. It examines issues of gender and race through the story of 17-year-old Jesse Harney and begins in the spring of 1885, when she dresses in men’s clothes, mounts her horse, and sets out west in search of her big brother, an outlaw on the frontier.”—Southern Living
“Larison has developed a pitch-perfect voice for his intrepid heroine.”—Publishers Weekly
"Larison gifts Jess with a strong voice to narrate her own story…. his western epic has wide appeal” —Booklist
“Told in -Jessilyn’s hard-hitting voice, [WHISKEY WHEN WE’RE DRY] has the resonance of a high lonesome ballad.” —Library Journal
“Like Philipp Meyer’s The Son or Robert Olmstead’s Savage Country, Whiskey When We’re Dry draws on Larison’s own experiences with the “cowboy arts” to paint a vivid portrait of the American West as witnessed by an unforgettable character.”—BookPage
“An evocative portrait of the old west with all its grittiness and all its openness.” – The Roundtable
"An orphan girl straight out of a Gillian Welch song, betrayed in every way imaginable by the brutality that 'won the West,' is left no way to hew a family or honor but to become a virtuoso cross-dressed killer of Manifest Destiny's men. As Jessilyn Harney takes on the great lies and liars with lyrical violence, her voice takes flight, becoming a sustained, forlornly beautiful, mind-bending aria for our age." —David James Duncan, author of The River Why
"Whiskey When We're Dry is the story of a surprising heroine. In her search for home and family, orphaned Jessilyn Harney rides out on a lonely quest, and invents herself anew. Narrated in a voice cobbled out of slang and sagebrush, Larison's novel is a vivid and fast-paced frontier saga." —Kate Manning, author of My Notorious Life
Kirkus Reviews
2018-05-28
A young woman with a knack for trick shooting heads west in the late 1800s to track down her outlaw brother.Jessilyn Harney, the folksy narrator of Larison's third novel (Holding Lies, 2011, etc.), has grown up watching her family lose its grip on its prairie homestead: Her mother died young, and her father is an alcoholic scraping by with small cattle herds. He's also persistently at loggerheads with Jess' brother, Noah, who eventually runs off to, if the wanted posters are to be believed, lead a Jesse James-style criminal posse. So when dad dies as well, there's nothing for teenage Jess to do but head west to find her brother, which she does disguised as a man. ("A man can be invisible when he wants to be.") Her skill with a gun gets her in the good graces of a territorial governor (Larison is stingy with place names, but we're near the Rockies), which ultimately leads to Noah and a series of revelations about the false tales of accomplishment that men cloak themselves with. Indeed, Jess' success depends on repeatedly exploiting false masculine bravado: "I found no shortage of men with a predilection for gambling and an unfounded confidence in their own abilities with a sidearm," she writes. The novel's plot is a familiar Western, with duels, raids, and betrayals, brought thematically up to date with a few scenes involving closeted sexuality and mixed-race relationships. But its main distinction is Jess' narrative voice: flinty, compassionate, unschooled, but observant about a violent world where men "eat bullets and walk among ghosts." The dialogue sometimes lapses into saloon-talk truisms ("Men is all the time hiding behind words"; "Being a boss is always knowing your true size"). But Jess herself is a remarkable hero.Like a pair of distressed designer jeans, the narrative's scruffiness can feel a little too engineered, but the narrator's voice is engaging and down-to-earth.
