1863, New Mexico Territory. Shot full of holes and on the run from the relentless pursuit of his one-time friend now intent on retribution, Confederate deserter Everett Root finds himself navigating the brutal desert headed to the town of Mesilla, where he believes salvation lies. But when Everett stumbles on a cache of silver, and a young girl who’s lost everything, he is forced to take stock of his past and his future. Full of sprawling landscapes and wild gunmen, Mesilla is a story of one man’s resolve to rectify the wrongs he has committed and make peace with his place in the world. Advance praise: “A shotgun marriage between classic and revisionist Western, Mesillasings a hard-bitten practicality and brutal authenticity.” —Emily Schultz, author of The Blondes “In a mounting gush of sumptuous prose, Robert James Russell’s Mesilla scrubs bare the elements of the classic Western—the wounded, questing hero, the damsel in distress, the phantasmal villain in hot pursuit—and reinvents them as existential meditation.” —Matthew Gavin Frank, author of Preparing the GhostThe Mad Feast “Robert James Russel’s Mesillareads like young James Lee Burke–action so sharp readers might as well pull their fingers from the page looking for blood. A fine story of revenge in the old west, salvation hoped for, but not easily achieved.” —Urban Waite, author of The Terror of Living and Sometimes the Wolf “If Albert Camus had written westerns, they might have sounded something like Robert James Russel’s Mesilla. Tough as rawhide, coiled like a diamond back, and spare as the New Mexico desert, this taut novel is as loaded as the Dance revolver its wounded hero wields. Russell is a writer on the rise, with a voice and vision sure to entrance every reader who lays eyes on this book. I’m already pinning away for his next one.” —Peter Geye, author of The Lighthouse Road