The heart in winter
<p><b>A <i>GUARDIAN </i>BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2024</b><br><b>A <i>NEW STATESMAN </i>FICTION HIGLIGHT OF 2024</b><br><b>AN <i>OBSERVER </i>FICTION TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2024</b><br><b>AN </b><i><b>IRISH TIMES</b> </i><b>FICTION TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2024</b><br><br><b>'An absolute belter of a book' ANNE ENRIGHT<br></b><br><b>What if we ride out tonight?</b><br><b>What if we ride out and never once look back?</b><br><br>October, 1891. Butte, Montana. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains. The city is rich on copper mines and rampant with vice and debauchery among a hard-living crowd of immigrant Irish workers. <br><br> Here we find Tom Rourke, a young poet and balladmaker, but also a doper, a drinker and a fearsome degenerate. Just as he feels his life is heading nowhere fast, Polly Gillespie arrives in town as the new bride of the devout mine captain Long Anthony Harrington.<br><br>A thunderbolt love affair takes spark between Tom and Polly and they strike out west on a stolen horse, moving through the badlands of Montana and Idaho. Briefly an idyll of wild romance perfects itself. But a posse of deranged Cornish gunsmen are soon in hot pursuit of the lovers, and closing in fast . . .</p>