Whiskey When We're Dry

By: John Larison

Narrated by: Sophie Amoss

Named a Best Book by Entertainment Weekly, O Magazine, Goodreads, Southern Living, Outside Magazine, Oprah.com, HelloGiggles, Parade, Fodor’s Travel, Sioux City Journal, Read it Forward, Medium.com, and NPR’s All Things Considered.

"A thunderclap of originality, here is a fresh voice and fresh take on one of the oldest stories we tell about ourselves as Americans and Westerners. It's riveting in all the right ways - a damn good read that stayed with me long after closing the covers." (Timothy Egan, New York Times best-selling author of The Worst Hard Time)

From a blazing new voice in fiction, a gritty and lyrical American epic about a young woman who disguises herself as a boy and heads west

In the spring of 1885, 17-year-old Jessilyn Harney finds herself orphaned and alone on her family's homestead. Desperate to fend off starvation and predatory neighbors, she cuts off her hair, binds her chest, saddles her beloved mare, and sets off across the mountains to find her outlaw brother Noah and bring him home. A talented sharpshooter herself, Jess' quest lands her in the employ of the territory's violent, capricious governor, whose militia is also hunting Noah - dead or alive.

Wrestling with her brother's outlaw identity, and haunted by questions about her own, Jess must outmaneuver those who underestimate her, ultimately rising to become a hero in her own right.

Told in Jess' wholly original and unforgettable voice, Whiskey When We're Dry is a stunning achievement, an epic as expansive as America itself - and a reckoning with the myths that are entwined with our history.

©2018 John Larison (P)2018 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“Mulan meets Deadwood in a Wild West novel narrated by its straight-shooting heroine.” (O Magazine)

“A smooth yet bracing Western yarn that both celebrates and subverts the romance of the Old West through more complex contemporary perspectives on gender and race…. As in Charles Portis’ classic True Grit, much of the appeal of the telling hangs upon the distinct voice of its narrator, and Jesse’s narration combines folksy vernacular with an easy loping gait.” (Seattle Times)

“Larison writes with unrelenting momentum and thoughtfully explores questions of gender identity, power, and violence.” (Outside Magazine)

Incredible

Seldom are skilled prose and a truly moving story blended so into such a captivating paced narrative. The author makes you root for the villain even in one if the most brutal scenes I have ever read.
Don’t miss this one. And the reading in audio version is perfectly toned.

Wonderful!

Oh so good! I could not stop listening! Narrated very well, excellent detail and gripping story

Prairie Prose

Whiskey When We’re Dry by John Larison

“This life is cut with trails unrode. There was a time I resented that fact, the cruelty of being stuck to only one. But age like I got teaches you to be grateful for those trails untook. The old mind can wander their lengths and see what the eyes was never allowed, what the eyes would have missed. I’ve had time to wander those trails that interest me.”

Oftentimes when I read a book, I have a pretty clear memory of when I picked it out or who recommeconded it. I have no such memory with Whiskey When We’re Dry. My reasons for reading it are about as nebulous. A ‘book-tac-toe’ challenge would be completed by a book with a yellow cover. Might as well give it a spin, right? When I started the book, I really had no idea what it was about. Whiskey I suppose. It didn’t take long for Larsion’s prose to pull me in. A few lines, delivered with folksy honesty but no less profound had me hooked from the get-go. I was fully prepared to enjoy what I assumed was going to be the tale of a family and their plot of land. The woes of fields gone fallow, and steers rustled. I don’t read a lot of western fiction, but I was ready. Then the story took a turn. Tragedies and tribulations befell the characters, all still beautifully expounded upon from Jesse’s first-person narration.

The protagonist, a young girl named Jessilyn is forced on the open road, hoping to reconnect with the remaining family she has. She conceals her gender and becomes Jesse, hoping to pass for a young man for her own safety. Salient points were made about a woman’s role in the old west, especially for a woman traveling alone. The book has a lot to say about identity. Not just in terms of gender roles but of family, faith, ancestry, and that of a young nation healing from the Civil War. After continued prairie poetry about the uncaring wilderness and the cruelty of man, Jesse finds that her estranged brother has become a revered outlaw and finds herself in the employ of the governor. A character from whom manifest destiny was writ large. As a counter point, her brother Noah is convinced that he has been ordained by God on high to engage in banditry against a system he perceives as corrupt. The author doesn’t shy away from the fact that both men are invoking what they perceive to be the higher power for their own ends.

So the book becomes a full fledged neo-Western. Full of gunfights, duels, and crawling into a bottle of the eponymous spirit to quiet the conscious for the blood spilled. The book does not shy away from savagery. Whiskey and blood pour over the pages in equal measure, as do the cries of the maimed and bloodied. Jesse, and her evolution of violence, is compelling. Despite the brutality being described, Larison continues to do so in the same beautiful prose he uses to describe the sun setting on the junipers and sage.

“How could you kill as you have?
The same logic lies dormant within all fairy tales and histories, it is fundamental as our origins, as urgent as our breaths. And yet I will confess the choice was ours.
The choice is always ours.”

delivered in grit and truth...

the story and the narrator matched in perfect harmony. i felt like I was in the west in the 1800s following this family. raw, dusty with words and quotes that you will find inspiring. a true western.

A Hard Life to Read about

it feels authentic. The western frontier must have been this edgy. This raw. This painful.

great laid back narration.

Good, but drags at times

this story can be very grim. Often very dark, but well-drawn characters and good storyline. Unexpected ending.

Very good!

This book is gritty & not romanticized like most westerns. The main character is a female forced to live in a man's world. Due to that the female character takes on very masculine characteristics and feelings. The book is uniquely written to convey the masculinity of the character & the men surrounding her while maintaining an underlying femininity. I didn't love the ending, so I gave the story only 4 stars. The narration is fantastic. It's totally worth the credit to listen.

Beautiful writing, believably read.

Larison's novel addresses a number of themes, including religion, justice, gender identity, family loyalty and friendship without ever preaching or even promoting a clear opinion on any of them. The writing is beautiful, the characters believably complex and the performance superb.

An Instant Western Classic

This is the kind of book that makes me wish I had a longer commute. Amazing writing, masterful narration. I've seen this referred to as a feminist Western. While that's a fair assessment, what makes it even more truly feminist is that it doesn't feel like the author was trying to force a message. It's just sincere, compelling writing about a girl pushed to extremes.

Superb narration, engaging story

Sophie Amoss’s voice acting on this book is just amazing. A pleasure to listen to! The writing is utterly brilliant in places, and the story itself is interesting, both in plot and in the type of people the story is told through. This is not a stereotypical western with white heroes. Refreshing and thought provoking.