Wounded » (Second Edition, Revised Edition)

Percival Everett is a professor of English at the University of Southern California and the author of sixteen books, including American Desert, Erasure, and Glyph. He lives in Los Angeles and British Columbia.

Training horses is dangerous—a head-to-head confrontation with a 1,000 pounds of muscle and little sense takes courage, but more importantly patience and smarts. It is these same qualities that allow John and his uncle Gus to live in the beautiful high desert of Wyoming. A black horse trainer is a curiosity, at the very least, but a familiar curiosity in these parts. It is the brutal murder of a young gay man, however, that pushes this small community to the teetering edge of fear and tolerance.

As the first blizzard of the season gains momentum, John is forced to reckon not only with the daily burden of unruly horses, a three-legged coyote pup, an escape-artist mule, and too many people, but also a father-son war over homosexuality, random hate-crimes, and—perhaps most frightening of all—a chance for love.

Highly praised for his storytelling and ability to address the toughest issues of our time with humor, grace, and originality, Everett offers yet another brilliant novel.

The Washington Post - Jane Smiley

Wounded is a briskly written novel by an author of ready intelligence and considerable wit who is not shy about taking on complicated issues. I only wish he'd given the whole thing a hundred more pages.