Claire Watkins - Battleborn

The magazine editors who first put these stories out into the world: Aaron Burch and Elizabeth Ellen, John Irwin, Kathryn Harrison and Robert Arnold, Patrick Ryan, James Thomas and D. Seth Horton, Scott Dickensheets, Hannah Tinti and Maribeth Batcha, Lorin Stein and David Wallace-Wells, Caleb Cage, Jill Patterson and Jonathan Bohr Heinen, Conor Broughan and Jessica Jacobs, Susan Burmeister-Brown and Linda Swanson-Davies.

The Ohio State University Presidential Fellowship and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, for financial support. My exceptional colleagues at the Sewanee Young Writers’ Conference and Bucknell University. The Journal . My students. Peter Harrison, ever-hospitable dreamer. Kirsten Chen and Lumans. Every single person at Riverhead.

Reno, especially Nicole and Justice Mañha, Seth Lagana, Mallory Moore, Andrei, Jonathan Purtill, Jeff Griffin, Curtis Bradley Vickers and Jessica Seidl, Ben Rogers, Sundance Books, the Boyntons, the Laxalts and the Urzas.

Pahrump, especially Jesse Ray and the Tungs: Ryan, Jason, TJ and Jan.

Columbus, especially the Go Big Tuesdays: Alex Streiff, Bill Riley, Clayton Adam Clark and the Hammer. Special thanks to my friend G. Robert Urza, Nevada royalty, for taking it out and chopping it up, and for always talking me down. Isaac Anderson, Kim Brauer, Michael Brennan, Catie Crabtree, Brad Freeman (who supplied the best line in this book), Ben and Lily Glass, Holly Goddard-Jones, Donald Ray Pollock, Samara Rafert and Pablo Tanguay. And the best damn band in the land: Cami Freeman, Gina Ventre, David Macey, Dr. Jess Love, Andrew Brogdon, Maria Caruso, K. C. Wolfe, Christina LaRose, Elizabeth Ansfield, Jenny McKeel, Ken Nichols and the Albers: Mike, Julie, Natalie and Willy.

Beth and Annie, my dearest friends. Tri-tri’s forever.

My family, who never made art less than essential: Aaron, Aunt Mo and Uncle Jack. Ron Daniels and the whole Daniels clan. For all their insanity and all their love, the Watkinses: Al and Vaye, Uncle John, Auntie Jane, Aunt Lynn and Uncle Chris, Ben, Shannon, Lea, Luke, Eli, Jos, Paulie, Zanna, Char, Kai and Una.

Mary Lou Orlando-Frehler, toughest lady in the West, for the thrift stores, Zion, the doilies crocheted with obscenities, Caesar’s Palace, the cowboy boots, the turquoise and sterling silver, long johns, ponchos, Willie Nelson, Wet ’n’ Wild, the hats and hats and hats for winter. For everything.

Nic Baker and the tender, spazzy, virtuoso bean, Delilah Claire.

Derek Palacio. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being.

My sisters, Lise and Gaylynn, whose love goes everywhere with me. This book is you.

“A real treat… Through remarkably assured writing that manages to be both bristly and brittle, Watkins chronicles despair and loneliness, catalogs valiant fights for survival and desperate please to be heard, and every time has us rooting for her underdogs.”

“Dazzling.”

“Although individual stories stand alone, together they tell the tale of a place, and of the population that thrives and perishes therein… The historical sits comfortably alongside the contemporary and the factual nicely supplements the fictional… Readers will share in the environs of the author and her characters, be taken into the hardship of a pitiless place and emerge on the other side—wiser, warier and weathered like the landscape.”

“The most captivating voice to come out of the West since Annie Proulx—though it’s to early Joan Didion that [Watkins] bears comparison for her arid humor and cut-to-the-chase knowingness.”

“Exceptional… A writer of great precision and greater restraint, Watkins is a natural storyteller whose material enriches that gift rather than engulfing it… One doesn’t have to be from the Battleborn state to recognize and appreciate literature that resonates like this.”

“[A] breathtaking debut… [Watkins’] stories… carry the weight and devastation of entire novels.”

“Absorbing… [Battleborn’s] true setting is a Faulknerian desert of the heart, where the soil is cursed by its precious metals and one’s personal history can be just as toxic. Clear-eyed and nimble in parsing the lives of her Westerners, one of Watkins’s strengths is not dodging that the simple fact that love can be tragic, involving, as it does, humans so flawed, so often tender and yet incapable.”

“A powerful new voice that deserves recognition… [Watkins maps] a regional portrait while pausing for detailed sketches, with a strong perspective that blends the romanticized past of Larry McMurtry, heartbreaking characters of Annie Proulx, and bleak timeless landscapes of Cormac McCarthy.”

“As if Watkins’ prose embodies the desert landscape of Nevada itself, the stories are stony, unkind, and harsh, though never unattractive… Beneath these confessions runs a spiritual undertow—that salvific beauty can arise when brutality is brought to light… All of her stories left me feeling purged and oddly cleansed, easily making Battleborn one of the strongest collections I’ve read in years.”

“Her incredible talent fills every page of this raw, wild, soaring debut. She may be the coolest real-life literary lady we’ve discovered in quite a while.”

“As grounded as they are in real places, the stories are fictions, crafted with the skill of an artisan, working from the starting points of Mary Gaitskill and Aimee Bender.”

“Vibrant and assured… The settings of Watkins’ home state—evoked with craft that echoes Cormac McCarthy or Richard Ford—were the perfect settings for heartbreak.”

“What distinguishes Watkins’ work… is her command of time. Nearly all the stories are set in the present, but her characters constantly live with aftereffects of the past. They’re not simply ‘scarred’ by history; they’re irradiated by it, queasily lit from within.”

“[An] assured debut… Here’s hoping Watkins will continue to delve into Nevada’s unsound caverns and emerge with such worthy plunder.”

“Gloriously vivid stories about the human heart.”

“In her debut short story collection Battleborn Claire Vaye Watkins marries character to landscape as well as anyone I have read in years. These stories set in the Nevada desert are gritty and brilliant, and foretell an auspicious literary future for their author.”

“A coolly impressive new voice of the American West.”

“The people in Battleborn… aren’t characters in stories, but human beings perpetually yearning for warmth… Entering the varied lives is akin to watching a tightrope walker high overhead, moving with steady confidence without a net… Watkins writes with precision and care, the sentences themselves as surprising as the events, the dialogue, and the spare description… There is a purity to the prose that is a constant pleasure to read… There is great originality in these narratives… But the generosity and personal sacrifices of the people are as universal as the stars at night.”

“Readers… will find much to admire in this arresting collection, which one hopes is merely the first stop along the way for a writer who deserves a sustained literary life.”

“A fresh, fierce, fabulous collection. Watkins writes like the divine Didion—cool and clean with not a word wasted. Where’d she come from? I’m glad she’s here.”