Silver Light

The novel "Silver Light" is a story about a reclusive elderly photographer and her friend, a writer of Western comic books, that explores the multi-faceted world of the American West from 1865 to 1950. It features characters such as Susan Garth, Bark Blaylock, James Averill, and her father, a cattle rancher who reads Thomas Hardy. The cast includes Willa Cather, Montgomery Clift, Charles Ives, Judge Roy Bean, and characters from movies like "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" and "McCabe and Mrs. Miller". The novel juxtaposes the frontier of legend against a construct of the West as a constricted wilderness of the soul.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 384 pages
Publication date: 20 June 2022
Publisher: Oldcastle Books Ltd

From 1865 to 1950, the multi-faceted world of the American West, its rich, colorful characters, and its many faces - historical, mythical, and cinematic - are captured in the story of a reclusive, elderly photographer and her friend, a writer of Western comic books.

Two characters dominate the novel's foreground: a Georgia O'Keeffe-like figure, photographer Susan Garth, shrewd, cantankerous, reclusive, and still self-reliant at 80, and her longtime friend Bark Blaylock, a western writer/filmmaker who may be Wyatt Earp's son. A subplot involves James Averill, a wealthy Easterner who sees his philandering as a frontiersman's quest for knowledge. As the time frame shuttles between 1950 and the late 1800s, we meet Susan's father, a gentlemanly cattle rancher who reads Thomas Hardy and serves as a springboard to the Old West of Bat Masterson, Geronimo, and Billy the Kid. The cast includes Willa Cather, Montgomery Clift, Charles Ives, Judge Roy Bean, and numerous characters smuggled in from such movies as The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and McCabe and Mrs. Miller.

Silver Light artfully juxtaposes the brimming frontier of legend against a construct of the West as a constricted wilderness of the soul.

Weight: 276g
Dimension: 198 x 129 x 30 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780857305022