"Valid fiction is about truth. Literary authors find as well as invent their stories. In the American West, those stories often spring out of a concern with how the individual, so easily
tempted toward moral solipsism, manages, or doesn't to stay connected to the needs of others, and so keeps from becoming a law unto himself. If an examination of these forces is what western
writers tend toward, it's a gift the nation needs right now as it struggles with the conundrum of remaining true to its own laws while facing those who would not merely break the law but
destroy it. For years the Best of the West series has been bringing Western literature to the nation's attention. At no time has this effort been more important."---Rent Meyers. from the
foreword.
Best of the West: New Stories from the Wide Side of the Missouri, an annual anthology of exceptional short fiction rooted in the western United States, debuted in 1988 and continued publication
until 1992. Recognizing that the West remains rewarding territory for literary explorations, James Thomas and Seth Horton revived the series in 2009.
Best of the West 2010 brings together established and emerging writers who reinterpret this most vital of literary regions and create, as Kent Meyers puts it in his foreword, "gift[s] the
nation needs right now." Editors Horton and Thomas have chosen nineteen stories by writers including Sherman Alexie, Rick Bass, Ron Carlson, Julia Glass, William Kittredge, Kent Nelson, and Deb
Unferth. Their subjects vary from a Greek community in Wyoming dealing with a suicide, to a re-creation of Christ's crucifixion in New Mexico, to an unlikely friendship that peaks at a burial
ground in Alaska. Best of the West 2010 is the latest indication that the West has become one of the most crucial settings for contemporary American fiction.
