Are you in the mood for a Western with a lady protagonist? Are you a horse girl at heart? Do you love the sweeping vistas of Old Hollywood Westerns but wish there was a little more exploration of patriarchy? Do you love a fully realized girl character using her grit to get things done? Did you enjoy the movie Slow West? Whiskey When We’re Dry is the book for you.
The story is told by Jessilyn Harney, who starts out with her brother and dad, and eventually needs to set out on her own after finding herself orphaned (not a spoiler!) Her bother has become a notorious outlaw and Jessilyn decides that reuniting with him is the only way to get her life back. She’s skilled with a gun and a horse, but she’s a woman (Well, a teenager, but you know.) So she does the most obvious thing: cuts her hair, binds her chest, and sets off with her beloved horse. Her skills eventually get her hired as a gunman for a rich governor, a man who is also on the hunt for her outlaw brother.
The story contains a huge range of characters with their own interests, perspectives, experiences, hopes, and dreams; none of them feel false or phoned-in. At first you think, aha ok this is the Bad Rich Guy who is going to Get What’s Coming To Him! Aha, she has found what she is looking for and now everything will be fine and they will ride into the sunset! But no, because Larison complicates it all with real human motivations and consequences and neuroses. That’s why the conflicts, both micro and macro, are real and inevitable and heartbreaking.
We think of Westerns as very male-centric because they often are; women are usually supporting players and questions of sexuality and morality are usually fit neatly into a good-vs-bad shootout or brothel. But this story is murky. Several characters are clearly queer, but don’t have labels or social structures to articulate it in any way–so they don’t. Jesse is a sharpshooter, so she kills people, but it’s hardly framed as killing “the bad guys” – it’s a question of survival and finding her brother and being caught in a life that she loves but is full of hard edges and bad news. It feels like a deeply progressive book because Jesse’s female perspective shifts the narrative significantly, but the trappings are all familiar and conservative – a gritty outlaw on a horse in the Wild West.
I loved this book, and I think you should read it!
