by Ron Hansen
First published 1984
Emmett Dalton sits in his chair at sixty-five, the only man left breathing from the notorious Dalton gang. He spins tales for Hollywood producers now, trading memories for money. His stories spill out in vivid detail: the robberies that made headlines, the murders that stained their hands, the bootlegging operations that kept them flush with cash. Each memory carries the weight of violence and the thrill of living outside the law. Emmett recounts how he and his brothers rode through the American West, taking what they wanted and leaving chaos behind. The gang's criminal spree carved a bloody path through history until bullets and badges caught up with most of them. Now Emmett faces a different kind of reckoning. His past refuses to stay buried, and the stories he tells reveal both the brutal reality of outlaw life and the price of survival. In selling his memories, he confronts what it means to be the last man standing.
Genres: american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, american, crime, 19th-century
Vibes: dark, emotional, fast-paced, thought-provoking
Tropes: last-man-standing, unreliable-narrator
Setting: American West
Period: 19th Century, 20th Century
288 pages · Mass Market Paperback · Ballantine Books
Content warnings: graphic-violence, murder