What Was Written

What Was Written The Cypress Hills, 1873. Before the Mounted Police. Before the law had a name to put to itself. A man arrives at a whiskey post on the Canadian-American border wearing a dead minister's collar and carrying the dead minister's name. No one has sent for him. No parish waits. But a collar can do what nothing else will. He begins to write. Disputes are settled. Lines are drawn. A record takes shape. A congregation gathers. A widow lets him stay. A child learns his name. It starts to hold. But the borderlands have their own uses for law. Two traders press for advantage. A past in Fort Benton moves north. And out on the plain, Assiniboine people are drinking whiskey they never asked for, brought by men who do not answer to anyone. What Was Written is a novel about the law made in the absence of law, the violence that fills the silence where justice should be, and the cost of building a life on a name that was never yours. On June 1, 1873, at the Cypress Hills, everything he has written will be put to the question.

Pagina's: 361, Paperback, Troy Harwood-Jones