Ian Stansel

Ian Stansel discusses his new novel, The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo.

Praise for The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo

“A taut and powerful modern Western. I picked up The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo and did not put it down again until I had read the last, moving sentence. Follow Lena on horseback as she pursues a killer through the wilds of Northern California, and in the end you will find yourself someplace unexpected. One of the most compelling novels I’ve read in a long time.”—Eowyn Ivey, author of the To the Bright Edge of the World and the Pulitzer finalist The Snow Child

“Although set in the twentieth-first century, this fine novel has a mythic power and resonance. Ian Stansel is a gifted young writer who starts his novel at a gallop and never lets up until the story’s final reckoning.”—Ron Rash, author of Serena, Above the Waterfall

“Ian Stansel’s debut novel is so rich in evocative detail and gripping incident that I thought at several moments I was riding fast next to its sharply drawn characters across rough ground.  Like All the Pretty Horses before it, The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo inks an indelible portrait of a hard, gorgeous world that is both timeless and in deep, momentous flux. I’m grateful to Mr. Stansel for having written it.”—Laird Hunt, author of Neverhome and The Evening Road

About The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo

A contemporary Western debut about two brothers locked in a deadly feud, a woman on horseback trailing her husband’s killer, and the inescapable ties of home and family
When Silas Van Loy flees home on horseback to avoid capture for his brother’s murder, he is soon followed by both the police and his brother’s wife, Lena, who is intent on exacting revenge. She reluctantly lets her trusted stable assistant join her in a journey across the wilds of Northern California in the hopes of catching Silas for one final showdown. Stansel follows the chase and shares the story of the brothers’ rise from hardscrabble childhood to their reign as the region’s preeminent horse trainers, tracking the tense sibling rivalry that ultimately leads to the elder’s death.

A fully realized tale that challenges notions of the modern West, The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo will satisfy fans of Kent Haruf, Larry McMurtry, Molly Gloss, and Smith Henderson, and establish Stansel as a new voice in this grand tradition.