The Lonesome Trials of Johnny Riles

Summary

Someone shot his dad. Something killed his horse. So...anybody wanna a drink?

Author Gregory Hill trades the mythos of the classic western for a psychological what-the-hell ride within a landscape of supernatural paranoia and cryptic humor.

It’s 1975 and cowboy Johnny Riles is a headcase. He’s depressed, he’s drunk, and he’s Lonesome as hell.

Left by his family to care for the ranch on his own, Johnny manages to keep the cattle alive while struggling to justify his own existence. Embittered by the success of his younger brother, Kitch, a professional basketball player, it is only thanks to a salt-dry sense of humor and a plentiful supply of whiskey that Johnny keeps himself above ground.

On really bad days, he scavenges for arrowheads on the other side of the river that doesn’t run. It calms him down, he says, to collect the old shards.

On one of these bad days, Johnny uncovers an artifact far older than an arrowhead. The relic will plunge him into the terrifying underworlds of the Great Plains, where pity and kindness are indistinguishable from despair.

ALERT! THIS NOVEL CONTAINS DESCRIPTIONS OF: Cigarette smoking, whiskey consumption, claustrophobic situations, and a basketball game involving a character who was in no way inspired by the life of David Thompson. Also: twenty-eight instances of the word fuck.