About this item
The American West is bestselling author Larry Watson's forte, and in this, his tenth novel, he has created his most vivid, genuine antihero yet in Calvin Sidey, a man stuck in a myth. Calvin Sidey, steely, hardened, with his own personal code, is one of the last cowboys. It's the 1960s, and he's living off the grid in a trailer on the prairie when his adult son, Bill, seeks his help. A mostly absentee father and grandfather, Calvin nevertheless agrees to stay with his grandchildren for a week. He decamps for his son's house in the small town where he once was a mythic figure, and soon enough problems arise: a boy's attentions to seventeen-year-old Ann are increasingly aggressive, and a group of reckless kids portend danger for eleven-year-old Will. Calvin only knows one way to solve a problem: the Old West way, in which ultimatums are issued and your gun is always loaded. In the changing culture of the 1960s, Calvin isn't just a relic; he's a wild card. At the same time, his old-school ways exert a powerful effect on those around him, from the widowed neighbor, Beverly Lodge, who feels herself falling for him and wants to be part of his life, to his grandchildren. Ann and Will see in their grandfather a man who brings a sudden, if shocking, order to their lives, as Calvin terrorizes those who have often terrorized them. With the crisp, restrained prose for which Larry Watson is revered, As Good as Gone is a story of a man increasingly at odds with the world. This is Larry Watson at his best.Praise for Larry Watson: "With rugged prose as biting as a northern plains wind . . . Watson writes of people universal in their flaws and virtues, a community that cannot be defined or limited to one region or genre." - The Washington Post Book World
About the Author
Larry Watson was born in 1947 in Rugby, North Dakota. He grew up in Bismarck, North Dakota, and was educated in its public schools. Larry married his high school sweetheart, Susan Gibbons, in 1967. He received his BA and MA from the University of North Dakota, his PhD from the creative writing program at the University of Utah, and an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Ripon College. Watson has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1987, 2004) and the Wisconsin Arts Board.Larry Watson is the author of the novels IN A DARK TIME; MONTANA 1948; WHITE CROSSES; LAURA; ORCHARD; SUNDOWN, YELLOW MOON; AMERICAN BOY; LET HIM GO; AS GOOD AS GONE; the fiction collection JUSTICE; the chapbook of poetry LEAVING DAKOTA; and the poetry collection, LATE ASSIGNMENTS. Watson's fiction has been published in ten foreign editions, and has received prizes and awards from Milkweed Press, Friends of American Writers, Mountain and Plains Booksellers Association, New York Public Library, Wisconsin Library Association, Critics' Choice, and The High Plains Book Award. MONTANA 1948 was nominated for the first IMPAC Dublin international literary prize. The movie rights to MONTANA 1948 and JUSTICE have been sold to Echo Lake Productions and WHITE CROSSES and ORCHARD have been optioned for film. The 2020 movie version of his book LET HIM GO stars Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Lesley Manville, Jeffrey Donovan, and Boo Boo Stewart. He has published short stories and poems in Gettysburg Review, New England Review, North American Review, Mississippi Review, and other journals and quarterlies. His essays and book reviews have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and other periodicals. His work has also been anthologized in Essays for Contemporary Culture, Imagining Home, Off the Beaten Path, Baseball and the Game of Life, The Most Wonderful Books, These United States, Writing America, West of 98, Tales of Two Americas, and Milwaukee Noir.Watson taught writing and literature at the University of Wisconsin/?Stevens Point for 25 years before joining the faculty at Marquette University in 2003 as a Visiting Professor. He retired from Marquette in 2017. He has also taught and participated in writers conferences in Colorado, Montana, Arizona, New Mexico, North Dakota, Texas, Vermont, Wisconsin, St. Malo and Caen, France.Larry's latest novel, THE LIVES OF EDIE PRITCHARD, was published by Algonquin Books in 2020 . He and Susan live in Kenosha, Wisconsin. They have two daughters, Elly and Amy, and two grandchildren, Theodore and Abigail.
