Nevada's back country is a region of drought-parched sagebrush and snow-clogged winters, rugged ranchers and fiercely independent loners seeking solitude in remote canyons. But the Nevada of Art Gibney's superb new story collection is part of the modern West, where traditional ways collide uneasily with apocalyptic technologies, ranchers contend with BLM bureaucrats about the use of the land, downwinders die of horrible malignancies, and no canyon is inviolate to the ubiquitous military presence. Gibney vividly captures the tensions of the contemporary rural West of ranchers struggling to...