Close Range: Wyoming Stories

From the bestselling author of The Shipping News and Accordion Crimes comes one of the most celebrated short-story collections of our time. Annie Proulx's masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in these unabridged, breathtaking tales of loneliness, quick violence, and the wrong kinds of love. Each of the stunning portraits in Close Range -- including the original story "Brokeback Mountain", the basis for the Academy Award-winning script -- reveals characters fiercely wrought with precision and grace.

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

...[P]owerful....[W]hat drives Mr. Proulx's people mainly is lust and lechery, itch and obsession....[R]ead [these stories] for their absolute authenticity, the sense they convey that you are beyond fact or fiction in a world that could not be any other way....Besides, you have little choice about reading [them] once you've begun them....bleak but expressive. —The New York Times

Even when Proulx is writing about modern-day characters, her stories seem like they are from another time. In a way, they are: Proulx often sets her tales in forgotten places at a pace that's measured, intricate, and more closely aligned with earlier, quieter days.