Steinbeck could have learned a lot from this book. Its stories bring us American history in living color (real people, in white, black, and red), from Oklahoma land runs of 1889-92 down through the Dust Bowl, World War Two, Viet Nam, and the invasion of Iraq. We meet homesteaders, bootleggers, revival preachers, rich oil men and failing farmers, children of slaves working for freedom, a WW2 veteran who trades his phantom arm for a farm, a dying WWII vet whose son peddles smart bombs that are killing Iraqi children. In the first story, we are there for the much-mourned death of a grandmother...

Dick Swiveller, the wittily named park ranger who is by turns both ill-tempered and kind, Winston 'Franzia' Weatherby, the only wino Swiveller knows who really drinks wine, One-eyed Rita. . . Fern. . . One-Beer Bob. . . these are just some of the memorable characters who inhabit Jerry Wilson's stories. Drawing heavily on personal experience and with keen eyed observation of the human condition, Wilson writes about broken lives, the dispossessed, those who are unwanted, who go unnoticed, and yet somehow manage to survive. This is an America that will be immediately familiar to anyone who has...

"Like the Cimarron River itself, Jerry Wilson's novel teems with life and beauty and movement. Across the Cimarron bears you along on the currents of Time and Memory, and begs you to ponder one of the most fundamental questions of human existence: How deep is your claim to the earth?" --Brad McLelland, author of Bruisers Across the Cimarron is a fine, fine novel, that deserves a broad readership-of those interested in the history of the American West-and of lovers of powerfully engaging fiction. The narrative voice is generally spare and direct, with moments of great passion and deep feeling....