Annie Proulx Stories

With a new introduction by Colm Toibin.

From one of the greatest story writers of our time, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, two O. Henry Prizes, and the celebrated author of Brokeback Mountain, comes a collection that includes three new stories and the most iconic stories of Annie Proulx's stunning, decades-long career.

Annie Proulx's "gritty and gleaming stories" (New York Times Book Review) are about loneliness, violence, desperation, and the wrong kinds of love. In "The Mud Below," a rodeo rider's obsession marks the deepening fissures between his family life and self-imposed isolation. In "The Half-Skinned Steer," an elderly fool drives west to the range he grew up on for his brother's funeral and dies a mile from home. In the masterpiece, "Brokeback Mountain," the difficult affair between two cowboys survives everything but the world's intolerance.

These are stories of hard times, and unlikely elation, set in a landscape both brutal and magnificent. Enlivened by folk talks, flights of fancy, and details of ranch and rural work, they juxtapose Wyoming's traditional character and attitudes--confrontation of tough problems, prejudice, persistence in the face of difficulty--with the more benign values of the new west.

Table of Contents:

From Heart Songs:

Stone City

Bedrock

Heart Songs


From Close Range

The Half-Skinned Steer

The Mud Below

People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water

The Bunchgrass End of the World

Brokeback Mountain


From Bad Dirt

The Hellhole

The Indian Wars Refought

The Trickle Down Effect

What Kind of Furniture Would Jesus Pick?


From Fine Just the Way It Is

Family Man

I've Always Loved This Place

Them Old Cowboy Songs

Tits Up in a Ditch


New Stories

Barbecue Master

The Hadal Zone

The Corn Woman, Her Husband, and Their Child