Hardland is one of several books I’ve read that topple the Western genre, first by being from a woman’s point of view and by not romanticizing the American Old West. The novel follows the life of Ruby Fortune from her early teens, though her rise as an Annie Oakley type sharpshooter in a Wild West show, losing both her parents, her marriage in her mid teens, the birthing of her four sons and stillbirth of another, her survival of the spousal abuse she endures—and its aftermath. Gutsy and painfully aware of her flaws, she cusses like a sailor and carries a two-shot Derringer at her waist. She develops into a hard-working capable woman. She enjoys sex and men but not the psychological and physical baggage that may come with a relationship.
Hardland is set as America’s Gilded Age winds down, in Jericho, a fictional town situated near Phoenix, Arizona. Sweeney captures the heat and dust of the physical locale as well as the mores of a small mining town populated by drunken miners, grifters masquerading as nuns, a prim school marm, and a love-sick marshall—plus the man Ruby falls in love with. Even among these oddballs, Ruby struggles to fit in as she tries to raise four boys while running a boarding house.
Written in present tense, the novel draws the reader into a most intimate look at a staunch heroine.
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Hardland: A Novel (She Writes Press, September 13, 2022) is available through:
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You can read my reviews of books with that turn the Western genre head over heels:
Whiskey When We’re Dry by John Larison
Prospects of a Woman by Wendy Voorsanger
In a Town Called Paradox by Miriam Murcutt and Richard Starks
Outlawed by Anna North
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