Here are the real Wyoming stories, set not on Brokeback Mountain but against the Wind River country and the rugged landscape of the oilfields, written by someone who grew up on the land.

Robert Roripaugh has gathered his best short stories from a lifetime of writing and publication in respected magazines and journals such as Atlantic Monthly and South Dakota Review and compiled them for the first time in this collection.

The characters in the eight stories in this collection are fiercely drawn and won’t be soon forgotten: the misfit Billy Jenks; Virginia Shield speaking through Freshman English themes about her home on the Wind River Reservation; Slade Wilson, the man who killed the split-toed wolf;  Bill Reno, returning to Wyoming after a military tour in Japan.