Close Range : Wyoming Stores

"Proulx writes a sentence like a whip: it whistles and snaps and lands right on target, " New York Newsday has said. "What sets her well apart from the ruck of writers, " exclaimed Time magazine, "is the lash and sting of her language." Proulx's masterful language and vast love of the West are evident in this magnificent collection of short stories about loneliness, quick violence, and wrong kinds of love.

In "The Mud Below, " a rodeo rider's isolation and obsession mark the deepening fissures in family life and a culture that no longer tolerates a loner. "Brokeback Mountain, " the unsettling story of a love affair between two cowboys, is collected in The O. Henry Stories, 1998; the "The Half Skinned Steer, " about an embittered old man who returns to the ranch he grew up on for his brother's funeral, is included in Best American Short Stories of the Century, to be published in spring 1999.

The stories in this collection have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and Harper's. This is work by an author writing at the peak of her craft.