'A thunderclap of originality, here is a fresh voice and fresh take on one of the oldest stories we tell about ourselves as Americans and Westerners. It's riveting in all the right ways a damn good read that stayed with me long after closing the covers' Timothy Egan, author of The Worst Hard Time

A gritty and lyrical American epic about a young woman who disguises herself as a boy and heads West.

In the spring of 1885, seventeenyearold Jessilyn Harney finds herself orphaned and alone on her family's homestead. Desperate to fend off starvation and predatory neighbours, she cuts her hair, binds her chest, saddles her beloved mare, and sets off across the mountains. Her goal? To find her gunslinging fugitive brother Noah and bring him home.

A talented sharpshooter herself, Jess's quest lands her in the employ of the territory's violent, capricious governor, whose militia is also hunting Noah dead or alive. Wrestling with her brother's outlaw identity, and haunted by questions of her own, Jess must outmanoeuvre whose who underestimate her, ultimately rising to become a hero in her own right.

Told in Jess's wholly original and unforgettable voice, the story brims with page turning Western action, but its approach is modern and nuanced, touching on powerful issues from gender and sexuality to family and identity.

In the sweeping storytelling tradition of Larry McMurty's Lonesome Dove and Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain, Whiskey When We're Dry transcends the straight and narrow Western to land among the classics.

'Mulan meets Deadwood in a Wild West novel narrated by its straight shooting heroine' O Magazine

'A tale of the Old West with a fresh perspective' New York Post