COME WEST AND SEE by Maxim Loskutoff

Contributor Maxim Loskutoff's debut novel Come West and See is available from W.W. Norton & Company. Loskutoff appears in our Spring 2015 issue with story, "Little Hearts."

"This searing debut reimagines the American West through linked stories describing a violent rural separatist movement.

In an isolated region of Idaho, Montana, and eastern Oregon known as the Redoubt, an armed occupation of a wildlife refuge is escalating into civil war. Against this backdrop, twelve stories of ordinary lives explore the loneliness, fragility, and heartbreak inherent to love. Families feel the far-reaching shockwaves of displacement and division. A mother makes a hard choice for her sons when their father goes to lead a standoff with the federal government. An unemployed carpenter joins a militia after his wife leaves him and the first airstrikes raze the streets of his hometown. A former soldier raises the daughter of a dead comrade in a bunker beneath an abandoned farm.

Ranging from the cities to the small towns of the West, and imbued with its own brand of radical empathy, Loskutoff's fiction is both timely and timeless. Come West and See surges with rage, longing, and fear, and offers startling insights into the wounds of the American people.

Maxim Loskutoff published his debut collection Come West and See with W.W. Norton & Company in North America and Albin Michel in France, and his novel, Spirits, will follow. A graduate of NYU’s MFA program, he was the recipient of a Global Writing Fellowship in Abu Dhabi and the M Literary Fellowship in Bangalore. Other honors include the Nelson Algren Award, a James Merrill Fellowship, and an arts grant from The Elizabeth George Foundation. He has worked as a carpenter, field organizer, and writing teacher, among many other things.  He lives in western Montana.