Wild West
Mark Anthony Jarman
Publisher: Flying Books
Summary
Mark Anthony Jarman unsettles the Wild West in this virtuosic, long-awaited novel. “Go west, young man.” The unnamed hero of Mark Anthony Jarman’s Wild West heeds the legendary call. He finds sublime rivers, wild horses, and big wolves. He finds public hangings and crazed battles. And he finds himself used as an instrument of the live-wire power and ulterior motives swirling from Assiniboia to Montana in the late 1800s. From the day our hungry and horny young hero stumbles upon the clumsy execution of Orangeman Thomas Scott by order of Louis Riel―a powder-keg moment that will change everything―he witnesses a dizzying series of significant and violent events throughout this raw picaresque. Forced to flee Red River, our singular everyman digs graves, cuts ice, does whatever needs doing in exchange for decent boots, a meal, and a drink, all the while pursuing the lovely shy woman he obsessively yearns for. He travels south, fights for Iron Butt Custer at Little Bighorn, then his loyalties start to shift, friendships deepen, tragedy visits, and our Irish-born lad rides north again to Batoche to fight in Riel's second rebellion. He sees Gabriel Dumont escape and watches Riel, a father of Confederation, tried and hanged for high treason. Wild West rips the past out of the past and pushes it right in our faces. Brutality and encroaching madness pulse through every sentence. Jarman gives us the unsettling unconscious of a chaotic new territory in a startling new light. Here it is, the great Canadian novel, reflecting our violent beginnings and making you question what “Canadian” even is. You’ll emerge with important new knowledge: the Wild West was not what you were told.
Available since: 10/06/2026.
Print length: 256 pages.
