Jack Burns is a cowboy and a man out of time. He has a steadfast refusal to accept the what he perceives as the tyranny of the twentieth century world he lives in and instead, Burns opts to ride his feisty chestnut mare across the New West--what was once a beautiful, unblemished land but that is now tarnished by airstrips and superhighways. He rejects contemporary society, refuses to register for the draft, and cuts down any and all fences he encounters.
It is this personal code of ethics and way of being that get Jack into trouble with the law, and soon enough he finds himself running from the very thing that could break his spirit--a fight for his freedom which, if caught, he may have to swap for the confinement of a grubby jail cell. The novel was adapted into the 1962 film Lonely Are the Brave starring Kirk Douglas.
Billy Vogelin Starr returns home to his beloved New Mexico after nine months away at school only to find his grandfather in a standoff with the United States Government. It seems the government wants to take his land and turn it into an extension of the White Sands Missile Range.
lthough facing the combined powers of the U.S. County Sheriff, the Department of the Interior, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the U.S. Air Force, John Vogelin stands his ground; he does this because to Vogelin, his land is his life and when backed into a corner, a tough old man like him will come out fighting. Here Abbey gives us a page turner that shows us what one determined individual can do in the face of overwhelming legal and military power as he fights to save his livelihood.
While best known for his fiction, Edward Abbey was also an enthusiastic creator of verse. Earth Apples, Abbey’s first and only collection of poetry, adds to his literary reputation as an irreverent writer. Whether writing about vast desert landscapes, New York City, or a love of bawdy women, Abbey’s verse is eloquent and unapologetically passionate. The poems gathered here, published digitally for the first time, are culled from Abbey’s journals and give an insightful and unique glance into the mind of this literary legend.
