A few weeks back, I sat in my Monday afternoon contemporary American literature class while we discussed the current renaissance of love for the American West in film and literature. The class is small, required for my major, and I’m a junior in college, so everyone knows me as that “guy who writes about fish and killing elk.”

I protest that I only hunt elk; killing one is lucky.

So, the class deferred discussion to me when our professor said, “Give me some examples of your favorite contemporary Western literature.”