God’s Country

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“Mr. Everett is successful combining heart with rage. . . . The novel sears.” ―David Bowman, The New York Times Book Review

This ‘comic and fierce’ novel spoofs the classic Western format with the dark, incisive humor we’ve come to expect from its acclaimed author.

The unlikely narrator through this tale of misadventures is one Curt Marder: gambler, drinker, cheat, and would-be womanizer. It’s 1871, and he’s lost his farm, his wife, and his dog to a band of marauding hooligans. With nothing to live on but a desire to recover what is rightfully his, Marder is forced to enlist the help of the best tracker in the West: a black man named Bubba.

One of the earliest works anchoring Percival Everett’s illustrious career, God’s Country is by turns funny, shocking, and devastating. The unlikely narrator through this tale of misadventures is one Curt Marder: gambler, drinker, cheat, and would-be womanizer. Unfortunately, he’s a coward. When he sees a band of “Injun impersonators” pillaging his home, he has “half a mind to ride down that hill and say somethin’, but it was just half a mind after all.” It’s 1871, and he’s lost his farm, his wife, and his dog to a band of marauding hooligans. With nothing to live on but a desire to recover what is rightfully his, Marder enlists the help of the best tracker in the West: a Black man named Bubba.

With an introduction from renowned novelist Madison Smartt Bell, this is the perfect edition to add to your growing Percival Everett collection. As NPR’s Michael Schaub noted, “It’s impossible to predict what the next Everett book will bring, but it’s always a safe bet that it’s going to be great.””I loved this book. God’s Country is like no western I’ve ever read before: a wonderfully strange and darkly hilarious brew of Kafka and GarcÌa Marquez, of Twilight Zone and F-Troop, with cameo appearances by Walt Whitman and George Custer thrown in for good measure. Percival Everett has written a terrific book, a Wild West road trip that challenges our assumptions about what human dignity really means.”
—Bret Lott, author of Jewel: A Novel

“An outrageously funny, alarmingly serious, highly enjoyable novel.”
—Amanda Heller, The Boston Globe

“This wild novel of the West is comic and fierce, turn by turn; it follows white and black and red men down their several paths through God’s Country, and the reader tracks them with a sense of shocked delight.”
—Nicholas Delbanco, author of What Remains

“Mr. Everett is successful combining heart with rage. . . . The novel sears.”
—David Bowman, The New York Times Book ReviewPercival Everett is the author of over 30 books since his debut, Suder, was released in 1983. His modern classics include I Am Not Sidney Poitier, So Much Blue, Glyph, and Trees. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches at The University of Southern California. Everett was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2020 with his novel Telephone. He received the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award at the National Book Critics Circle Awards 2022, and was awarded the PEN America Award for Dr. No in 2023.US

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