Rudy Ruiz’s Booklist-starred Valley of Shadows blends Western, magical realist novel, and ghost tale in the story of Solitario Cisneros, a retired sheriff forced to pick up his gun as a series of grisly murders fall upon the border town of Olvido, Mexico, in the late nineteenth century. In Beasts of the Earth by James Wade, winner of the prestigious MPIBA Reading the West Award for Debut Fiction for All Things Left Wild, the author weaves together two stories of violence and a grinding search for justice—one set in small-town Texas, the other in the Louisiana bayou—to form a gripping, redemptive whole.

Moderator: Matt Joyce, Texas Highways magazine senior managing editorRudy Ruiz, James Wade, Valley of Shadows, Beasts of the Earth