The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry

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 ballad maker, 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 .

REVIEWS

'An absolute belter of a book' ANNE ENRIGHT

Hardback

Language: English
Extent: 224
Publish Date: 6 June 2024
ISBN: 9781805302117
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Publisher: Canongate Books
Imprint: Canongate Books