If you’ve read any of Larry Watson’s outstanding novels (Montana 1948, anyone?), then you know why we are so excited to share with his newest, As Good as Gone, with you. If you haven’t read Larry Watson’s novels yet, here’s a great chance to see what you’ve been missing. Fill out the form below to enter for a chance to win a copy of As Good as Gone, a brilliant “drama at the intersection of Western mystique and middle-class reality” rendered in “plainspoken toughness,” as the Wall Street Journal says. 

Here’s a little bit more about As Good as Gone. (And trust us, you won’t soon forget Calvin Sidey.):

It’s 1963, and Calvin Sidey, one of the last of the old cowboys, has long ago left his family to live a life of self-reliance out on the prairie. He’s been a mostly absentee father and grandfather until his estranged son asks him to stay with his grandchildren, Ann and Will, for a week while he and his wife are away. So Calvin agrees to return to the small town where he once was a mythic figure, to the very home he once abandoned.

But trouble soon comes to the door when a boy’s attentions to seventeen-year-old Ann become increasingly aggressive and a group of reckless kids portend danger for eleven-year-old Will. Calvin knows only one way to solve problems: the Old West way, in which scores are settled and ultimatums are issued and your gun is always loaded. And though he has a powerful effect on those around him–from the widowed neighbor who has fallen under his spell to Ann and Will, who see him as the man who brings a sudden and violent order to their lives–in the changing culture of the 1960s, Calvin isn’t just a relic; he’s a wild card, a danger to himself and those who love him.

In As Good as Gone, Larry Watson captures our longing for the Old West and its heroes, and he challenges our understanding of loyalty and justice. Both tough and tender, it is a stunning achievement.