A gripping tale of murder and pursuit set against the shifting Sierra Nevada during the Gold Rush, where ambition, violence, and destiny collide. "
What Came West is astonishing. Unraveling the mythology of the Western with a genius for insight and description, Weil tells the story anew: a beautiful, ruminative, bloody, terrifying and brilliant book about a chapter in the life of one man and in the life of our country. Unmissable." --Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of
Less Sierra Nevada, 1840s, just before the Gold Rush ignites. Silas Hall has never belonged anywhere except the wild. Bullied as a child and uneasy even within his own family, he finds brief solace in love and fatherhood before the pull of the frontier overwhelms him. One day he heads west, chasing a life that might finally make sense.
What follows is a swift, pulse-pounding journey into the mountains, where Silas becomes one of the first white settlers to cross into the Sierra Nevada. He forges a precarious peace with the Indigenous people who live there--until the Gold Rush crashes in with violent force. As thousands flood the region, the balance shatters, and Silas commits murder, a desperate act that alters the course of every life around him, including his own.
Taut and propulsive,
What Came West is told in two parallel voices--one a tense, third-person account of Silas on the run, and the other a confessional letter from Silas to the son he left behind--and confronts many different forms of American inheritance, in all its danger, emotional voltage, and mythic momentum. Weil's masterpiece is a fierce, heart-driven portrait of an outsider racing toward belonging and barreling headlong into consequence.
