Little Century: A Novel

A young woman finds love—and war—as her family and rival settlers battle over land in this historical fiction novel of the American West.

Orphaned after the death of her mother, eighteen-year-old Esther Chambers heads west in search of her only living relative. In the lawless frontier town of Century, Oregon, she's met by her distant cousin, a laconic cattle rancher named Ferris Pickett. Pick leads her to a tiny cabin by a small lake called Half-a-Mind, and there she begins her new life as a homesteader. If she can hold out for five years, the land will join Pick's already impressive spread.

But Esther discovers that this town on the edge of civilization is in the midst of a range war. There's plenty of land, but somehow it is not enough for the ranchers—it's cattle against sheep, with water at a premium. In this charged climate, small incidents of violence swiftly escalate, and Esther finds her sympathies divided between her cousin and a sheepherder named Ben Cruff, a sworn enemy of the cattle ranchers. As her feelings for Ben and for her land grow, she begins to see she can't be loyal to both.

Little Century maps our country's cutthroat legacy of dispossession and greed, even as it celebrates the ecstatic visions of what America could become.

“Hums with raw energy. . . . Exhilarating.” —Boston Globe

“Keesey fuses the unforgiving landscape and the rich inner life of Esther with an artist's eye. . . . An unforgettable portrait.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“Briskly romantic . . . It's Willa Cather with a sense of humor.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

© 2024 Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Ebook): 9781429945271

Release date

Ebook: 2 July 2024