Wayne Johnson

From multiple Pulitzer Prize-nominated author; following Buck, a man fighting for his life, & Lucy, a semi-feral girl, living on the border of Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community reservation as tragedy and trauma unite the two. Buck, government name Michael Fineday, Ojibwe name Miskwa' doden (Red Deer) is on the brink of suicide. He has just been served divorce papers by his wife Naomi, who is fed up with his savior complex and the danger it often attracts to their door. Living on the border of Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community reservation, Buck makes a living as a boatbuilder and carpenter. He spends his days alone, trying to win the trust of a feral cat... until a semi-feral girl shows up, fascinated by the canoe Buck is building. Lucy, Ojibwe name Gage' bineh, (Everlasting Bird), lives in a trailer alone with her father, a local policeman struggling with PTSD which is compounded by the loss of Lucy's mother. Just barely fifteen she has lived with a lifetime of abuse, while knowing that if she ever spoke out, her father would bear the consequences. Buck senses Lucy is in trouble and doesn't hesitate to come to her defense. On the foundation of their shared Ojibwe heritage, they trace Lucy's abuse to a ring that extends farther than either of them ever imagined, while building a bond even sturdier than Buck's canoe.

This book considers the presence of the supernatural and Gothic elements of the Western on screen. These dark and sinister undertones often exist in Western narratives to draw attention to the ever-present issue of death and its haunting resonance which characters encounter. This book examines this through key historic moments in Western film and its contemporary incarnations. The book detects imposing correlations in themes and currents between the Gothic and the Western relating to existential crisis and a loss of faith in ideologies and  institutions. These themes represent the tensions between the old and the new, the deranged insistence on civility and order in a chaotic landscape, disillusionment and the shattering of faith in the natural order, and even nature  and order themselves. The Western, just like the Gothic tale, reminds us that new frontiers are mired in the past, and optimism and survival are hunted down and haunted by guilt-ridden past and passed anxieties and traumas