Join First Light Books for an evening with Josh Weil, whose new novel drops us into the Sierra Nevada on the eve of the Gold Rush and never lets go. What Came West is a story about murder, pursuit, and the collision between the wilderness a man has chosen and the violent tide of American expansion crashing in behind him. If you've ever been drawn to the literature of the West, from Cormac McCarthy to Larry McMurtry to the landscape itself, this is a conversation you won't want to miss.

​

A reception with the author will take place from 6:00 to 6:30 PM, followed by the conversation at 6:30 PM and a signing to close the evening. Tickets include a copy of the book and a reserved seat. Unreserved seats are available on a first come, first served basis. Free RSVPs are also encouraged.

​

About the book

“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.

​

What Came West is a fierce, heart-driven portrait of an outsider racing toward belonging and barreling headlong into consequence.

​

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. His books have been New York Times Editor's Choices and selected for the Powell's Indispensable program. He 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, the Library of Virginia Literary Award, the GrubStreet National Book Prize, and a Pushcart Prize.

‍

He is a Fulbright Fellow, and a graduate of the MFA program at Columbia University. Weil's short fiction has appeared in Granta, Esquire, Tin House, and One Story, among others, and his nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Sun, Oxford American, and Poets & Writers. He has been the Picador Guest Professor at the University of Leipzig, the Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi, and the Distinguished Visiting Writer at Bowling Green State University. For the past dozen years he has called the Sierra Nevada of Northern California home.

‍