What Came West by Weil, Josh
What Came West by Weil, Josh

What Came West

A gripping tale of murder and pursuit set against the shifting Sierra Nevada during the Gold Rush,...
$38.40 USD
$38.40 USD
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Author: Josh Weil
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Subtotal: $38.40
What Came West by Weil, Josh

What Came West

$38.40
What Came West by Weil, Josh

What Came West

$38.40
Author: Josh Weil
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Description
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.

Author: Josh Weil
Publisher: Doubleday Books
Published: 06/02/2026
Pages: 512
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.63lbs
Size: 9.38h x 6.34w x 1.12d
ISBN: 9780385550994


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 04/15/2026
Booklist 05/01/2026
Library Journal 05/08/2026 pg. 1
Publishers Weekly 06/01/2026

About the Author
JOSH WEIL is the author of the novel The Great Glass Sea, the novella collection The New Valley, and the story collection The Age of Perpetual Light. He is a Fulbright fellow and has been awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a "5 Under 35" award from the National Book Foundation, the California Book Award, and a Pushcart Prize. For the past dozen years, he has called the Sierra Nevada of Northern California home.
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