"Once in a great while there comes along a truly American writer, a writer whose prose evokes the texture of the landscape his characters inhabit: Merrill Gilfillan is such a writer. As Faulkner celebrated the South, Edward Abbey the West, so Gilfillan's writing conjures up the stark beauty and lyricism of the Great Plains." "In Sworn Before Cranes, his first collection of fiction, Gilfillan has peopled the plains landscape he so lovingly described in his earlier essays. Gilfillan's characters leave an impression of truth - sometimes tragic, sometimes comic, always unsettling: a slow man plotting the perfect revenge for past humiliations, an Ethiopian teenager searching for his first American Indian, a ranchwoman who ran from a death in Ohio, a medicine man who uses his powers to locate the body of a missing teenager. Gilfillan's language is rich and his stories are deceptively simple and radiant." "Merrill Gilfillan's previous book, the critically acclaimed Magpie Rising, was the unanimous choice for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award by a judging panel that included Annie Dillard and Donald Barthelme. The judges praised the "complex beauties" of Gilfillan's prose, which they described as "both tough-minded and sweetly lyrical.""--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved