The rodeo in Mizpah was like most, hard riding and filled with ranch hands, where women gathered with men as children ran the outskirts trying to mimic the feats of the cowboys. There was only one bar in Mizpah, the Steerhorn.
Shann Ray: A Novel. American Copper. Lakewood, Colorado: Unbridled Books, 2015.
Ray’s debut novel, American Copper, is a love song to America revealing the radiant and profound life of Evelynne Lowry, a woman who transcends the national myth of regeneration through violence. American Copper won the Foreword Book of the Year Readers’ Choice Award and the Western Writers of America Spur Award.
While the settings in American Copper clearly reference actual locales, it is understood that the book—including its places—is ultimately the product of the author’s imagination. The intent of this literary map is to enrich the reading experience by interpreting those places, not to render them literally or definitively.
Watch Shann Ray’s 2013 TEDxSpokane talk, The Greatest Work of Art is to Love Someone.