“Elwood Reid’s The Kettle is a savage, mesmerizing fever dream of a Western, full of blood, sorrow, dark humor, and astonishing beauty. Beneath its relentless momentum lies a profound reckoning with family, violence, and the treacherous distance between justice and revenge. Mythic in scope, ferocious in its storytelling, and utterly original.” —Paula McLain, author of Skylark and The Paris Wife
“The Kettle is the best Western I’ve read in years. If it’s true that literature is an unending conversation, Elwood Reid just sat down at the table with Larry McMurtry and Oakley Hall, Cormac McCarthy and Alan LeMay. Imagine The Searchers directed by Roman Polanski instead of John Ford and you’ll be on the right track. The Perch brothers wander west, their quest for revenge violent, funny, weird, and devastating. At one point, trying to ride a bison while naked, Jed Perch (in a rare moment of humility) admits it was a bad plan. But bad plans make for good reading, and I already miss the Perch boys.” —David Benioff
“With echoes of Cormac McCarthy and John Fante, Elwood Reid captures the brutal poetry of the Western landscape in this unforgettable American epic. The Kettle is a knockout.” —Jennifer Haigh, author of Mercy Street
“As Walter and Jed Perch travel west from their family’s ransacked Ohio farm in pursuit of their family’s killers, they travel from a remembered, happy world into something deranged and pragmatic and transformative. No one is sweet in this book, even as it contains one of most memorable moral compasses in the history of fiction. Elwood Reid’s beautifully written story is a kaleidoscope of violence, a rich, brutal stew.” —Jamie Harrison, author of The River View