Kevin Barry The Heart in Winter

THE SUNDAY TIMES HISTORICAL NOVEL OF THE YEAR THE INSTANT IRISH TIMES BESTSELLER PICKED AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE GUARDIAN , NEW STATESMAN , OBSERVER , IRISH TIMES , INDEPENDENT , IRISH INDEPENDENT , IRISH EXAMINER , TLS , SCOTSMAN , THE TIMES AND ECONOMIST What if we ride out tonight? What if we ride out and never once look back? 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. 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. 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 . . .