The Last Rancher

With The Last Rancher: A Novel, a family saga and contemporary western set on a ranch in southwest Kansas, Robert Rebein adds his distinctive voice and vision to those of an earlier generation of fiction writers of the American West that includes Larry McMurtry, Louise Erdrich, Cormac McCarthy, Thomas McGuane, and Annie Proulx.

Leroy Wagner has given his heart and soul to the Bar W Ranch. He knows no other way. His wife, Caroline, born in the city, struggles with the loneliness of marriage to a man committed first to his land. When tragedy robs them of their first-born, the handsome and talented Wade, it’s all either can do to face the world.

Their second-born, Michael, attempts to fill his brother’s shoes, and their only daughter, Annie, searches for a way to reconcile her love for the Bar W with her feeling that she must flee it if she is to survive. Finally, there’s Jimmy, the Wagners’ unplanned replacement child, born too late into a world of broken hearts.

When a near-fatal accident befalls Leroy, the Wagner children must return to the Bar W to save the ranch and what remains of their family ties. Secrets are unearthed. Truths are told. Consequences are faced.

Featuring a well-drawn setting full of complex male and female characters, The Last Rancher is a perfect read for the beach or for book club selection.

Editorial Reviews

Dodge City, Kansas, has found its bard. His name is Robert Rebein, and his debut novel, The Last Rancher, showcases an assured new voice of the contemporary American West. Prepare to be lassoed in an unforgettable and utterly satisfying family saga.”
—Will Allison, What You Have Left and A Long Drive Home

In The Last Rancher, a stunning new novel by Robert Rebein, an emergency forces Leroy and Caroline Wagner’s grown children home to the Bar W Ranch. Crises converge on Dodge City: Annie stalls on her PhD, Michael interrupts his law practice, and Jimmy pillages his parents’ medicine cabinet. In memory lives the looming specter of Wade, son and brother who died too young. The novel intimately follows a jarring collision of selves—not to mention cars, motorbikes, and a nun. In this ranching community, lives are intertwined like barbed wire, like tree roots that run under fences and buckle the ground, unearthing secrets into the blinding prairie light. I loved this book. A family drama with humor and heart, The Last Rancher gives you the prized shotgun seat and guns the gas. You’d be wise to buckle up.
—Sarah Layden, Imagine Your Life Like This and Trip Through Your Wires

Love and horses, whiskey and weed, land and money: The Last Rancher has it all. Robert Rebein has written a big-hearted literary page-turner to rival the family sagas of Richard Russo, Richard Ford, and John Irving.
—Kyle Minor, Praying Drunk

With The Last Rancher, Robert Rebein has crafted a story as timeless as storytelling itself—a patriarch in decline, a family marked by loss. By rooting these elements firmly in the Dodge City of today, though, Rebein has created a narrative unique to himself and the place. Reading The Last Rancher, I came to feel that I know these people in some elemental way and, just as importantly, know what their land means to them.
—Hozy Rossi, Appointment with Il Duce

In The Last Rancher, Robert Rebein’s characters are so real that I would swear I know them. He seamlessly weaves together past and present to cover decades of a Kansas family broken by tragedy. I was hooked from the first page to the last.
—Cheryl Unruh, Gravedigger’s Daughter: Vignettes from a Small Kansas Town and Flyover People: Life on the Ground in a Rectangular State

Robert Rebein grew up in and around Dodge City, Kansas, where his family has farmed and ranched since the late 1920s. A graduate of the University of Kansas, Exeter University in England, the State University of New York at Buffalo, and Washington University in St. Louis, Rebein teaches fiction and creative nonfiction writing at Indiana University Indianapolis.