Erasmus also picked up Scott Phillips’ Cottonwood, an engrossing historical novel set in the eponymous (fictitious) Kansas boomtown, as well as an interlude in San Francisco. The book is marketed as a Western noir, probably to capitalize on the success of The Ice Harvest and avoid the taint of the “Western,” but it’s a more expansive, literary novel than the tag warrants.
The novel (hardly as sex-obsessed as the PW review) begins in Cottonwood’s earliest days, and follows its saloon-keeper, Bill Ogden, through the town’s early boom days, then his exile after his business partner is murdered while the two of them are chasing a family of serial killers (based on these charmers), and his return, which becomes entangled with the prosecution of two women who are said to be members of the murderous clan.
Phillips does an excellent job of bring the various characters to life and telling a rich, multifacted, entertaining, often lurid tale. Erasmus looks forward to reading Phillips’ middle novel, The Walkaway, which appears to be both a prequel to The Ice Harvest and to feature one of Bill Ogden’s descendants.
Cottonwood placet.
