RC lecturer Robert James Russell will be launching his Western novel Mesilla at Literati Bookstore on Friday, September 25, at 7 PM! Robert will be reading from the novel, and signing books, too, and will be joined by Chicago-based writer Ben Tanzer Mesilla is set in 1863, New Mexico Territory. Shot full of holes and on the run from the relentless pursuit of his one-time friend now intent on retribution, Confederate deserter Everett Root finds himself navigating the brutal desert headed to the town of Mesilla. Matthew Gavin Frank says, “In a mounting gush of sumptuous prose, Robert James Russell’s Mesilla scrubs bare the elements of the classic Western—the wounded, questing hero, the damsel in distress, the phantasmal villain in hot pursuit—and reinvents them as existential meditation.” Emily Schultz, author of The Blondes, says, “A shotgun marriage between classic and revisionist Western, Mesilla sings a hard-bitten practicality and brutal authenticity.”
