The Winter Family

Noir meets the Western in this hyperkinetic debut novel, which recounts the exploits of the Winter Family band of outlaws over three decades, from its inception in the midst of the Civil War to its final bloody stand in the Oklahoma Territories.

Court-martialed for their actions during the Civil War, a band of hardened Union soldiers recasts themselves as outlaws. Among the twisted men who’ve found brotherhood in battle are the psychopathic killer Quentin Ross, the mean and moronic Empire brothers, the impassive ex-slave Fred Johnson, the dangerous child prodigy Lukas Shakespeare and, at the malevolent center, their cold, stoic leader, Augustus Winter-a man with an almost pathological resistance to society’s rules and a preternatural gift for butchery that is matched only by his eerie charisma. Whether on the front lines of the military battle in Georgia or of politics in a brutal Chicago election, or bounty-hunting in the deserts of Arizona, the hypnotic logic of Winter’s grim borderland morality pulls the group into a whirlpool of unrestrained violence. The Winter Family is a high-octane exploration of human nature and the dark contradictions of progress.