In Black Angus, Newton Thornburg continues

to explore the American scene with the same

masterful style that critics acclaimed in To Die in

California and Cutter and Bone. ("Shows how

much can be done within a classic form by a writer

who knows his business The best novel of its

kind in ten years." -- The New York Times.)

Powerfully and beautifully written, Black Angus

tells the story of Robert Blanchard, a man who

leaves his cushy job in the city to create a new and

more meaningful life for himself and his family

raising cattle on a ranch in the Ozarks. But from

the beginning, like so many other American

dreams, this one goes bad. Cattle prices fall.

Blanchard s herd is quarantined. His son devel-

ops asthma. His wife cannot adjust to country

living and longs to return to the city. And

Blanchard s retarded brother, Tommy, a thirty-

four-year-old bearded child who plays through the

teeming days -- even he senses that things are

not as they once were.

Into this unhappy group breezes another fugi-

tive from the city, Blanchard s old friend Shea, the

"wizard of wind," an ex-advertising copywriter big

enough to be a pro-football lineman but a pixie in

his own mind, fun-loving and funny, alcoholic and

violent by turns. Wanted by the police on charges

of assault and nonsupport, he becomes for

Blanchard the wrong man at the wrong time, the

catalyst that sets him on a desperate course to

save the ranch -- by rustling his own cattle.