Ghosts of the Desert (Point Blank) - Softcover

Ireland, Ryan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1780748205 ISBN 13: 9781780748207

Publisher: Point Blank, 2016

Synopsis

Ryan Ireland’s GHOSTS OF THE DESERT is an intensely compelling read full of muscular prose and characters who are, at once, cinematically vivid and entirely, scarily authentic. This book richly deserves and surely will find a wide, enthusiastic audience.”
Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-Winning author

To escape his troubled past, Norman heads to the Utah desert to lose himself in work. Having just received a research grant he plans to study the ghost towns and now-obsolete mines littering the inhospitable landscape. But when he comes across a desert-dwelling group of outcasts, and is taken captive by their charismatic yet ever-watchful leader, he is introduced to an alternate way of life that both repulses and attracts him. As Norman struggles to find his place and make sense of this strange new world with its perverse and unorthodox practices he must decide whether to take his chances and run, or yield, and risk becoming one of those around him.

Ireland’s refined and sparse prose cut through to the dark heart of the American dream in this chilling novel about the complex relationship between the primitive and the civilized, the living and the dead.

About this title

About the Author:

Ryan Ireland was born and raised in Ohio. He lives in the village of Alpha with his wife and three children. His work has appeared in Fogdog Review, Seems and Writing on the Edge. In 2009, he was recognized by Glimmer Train as one of the 25 Best New Writers. His first novel, Beyond the Horizon, was published by Oneworld Publications in 2015.

Review:

"A violent, strange, perverse literary near-horror novel, with a fair bit of philosophizing mixed in. Comparisons to Cormac McCarthy aren’t entirely wrong; if you mix in a little Stephen King you won’t be far off . Ireland’s prose has kinetic, muscular feel to it . it’s gripping; it’s scenic, and it’s philosophical. The right reader will absolutely get a kick out of it.”
Viking Online

Ryan Ireland’s GHOSTS OF THE DESERT is an intensely compelling read full of muscular prose and characters who are, at once, cinematically vivid and entirely, scarily authentic. This book richly deserves and surely will find a wide, enthusiastic audience.”
Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-Winning author

"When we finish reading Ryan Ireland’s GHOSTS OF THE DESERT, one can only think of the unavoidable certainty of a contemporary classic. The prose is hypnotizing and precise, the characters flawlessly conceived, the plot superb: a lush page-turner that constantly reveals a dreamlike landscape before the reader’s eyes. At some point in life, we all have to escape something or something. Ireland’s main character, chooses past, perhaps the most difficult thing to escape from; what reads throughout each page is an extraordinary powerful narrative, ghostly and lyrical, like the words we hear in dreams or in the distant lands of the soul. Ireland chooses the desert like Melville chose the sea or Conrad, the heart the darkness. A rare and sublime story with the psychological backdrop, an interpretation of survival; both deeply emotional and well crafted. The best book I have read this year."
Carlos Pintado, winner of the Paz Prize for Poetry

"A courageous and essential writer."
Ann Weisgarber, author of the award-winning The Personal History of Rachel DuPree
PRAISE FOR BEYOND THE HORIZON by Ryan Ireland:
Expertly plotted, artfully executed, compulsively readable, Ryan Ireland’s Beyond the Horizon offers more evidence that young writers are doing some of their most compelling work in the one-time ghetto of genre fiction, and it marks the debut of a writer with a command of the form, a writer who has something to say. Attempting to engage the mythology of the West as well as of the western itself, Ireland aims high, and thanks to no small amount of vision, talent, and audacity, his novel succeeds on nearly every level . A page-turner and an adventure story as well as the obligatory deconstruction of the genre the novel evolves into a fantastical history of the American West.”
Tom Andes in The Los Angeles Review of Books

"Blending narratives and playing with concepts of time, Ireland tells a brutal, twisted tale of an imagined, metaphorical American West that will remind readers of Blood Meridian author Cormac McCarthy.”
Toldeo City Paper

Ireland finds no heroes in his debut novel, which blends fanciful history with magic realism to create a critical allegory of the American expansionist experience.... Intellectual in theme, literary in execution: think Gabriel García Márquez reimagining Little Big Man.”
Kirkus Reviews

About this edition

• Publisher: Point Blank
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1780748205
• ISBN 13: 9781780748207
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304