Pale Harvest

"An unforgettable literary blast…Hepner's characters are among the most compelling in contemporary fiction. Readers will be moved by the author's poetic rendition of the land's unique topography that inflames, confounds, and rarely satisfies one's personal hunger for carving out a meaningful and happy life."

—THE UTAH REVIEW


"At once bleak and pleasingly beautiful, the novel grows true from pain, betrayal, loss, love, and pale salvation."
—15 BYTES


"A dark novel by a deft storyteller."

—HIGH COUNTRY NEWS


"Dazzlingly laconic, making poetry of the sheer sweat and physicality of everyday life in a worn–out landscape."

—LIBRARY JOURNAL, starred review


"A meditation on the nature of hope and self–determination, a sweeping elegy to a dying town and to the bond between blood and earth."

—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, starred review


"A deeply moving and intellectually profound novel built on the iconic myth of the American West. Think McMurtry's The Last Picture Show or Horseman, Pass By. A bravura debut."

—KIRKUS REVIEWS, starred review


"Set in a rugged scrap of Utah, this first novel rings with the hard–scrabble tones of Steinbeck…lush with unusual vocabulary and microscopic detail that combine to evoke a land and a kind of life singular to the American West."

—FOREWORD REVIEWS


"Hepner is a master storyteller, a craftsman of the first order, and a fine new talent. His Western Realism is a refreshing jolt, a throwback to Steinbeck and Stegner with its own stamp of uniqueness."

—ANTHONY SWOFFORD, author of Jarhead


"Hepner's starkly poetic voice leads us into the lives of characters torn between the imagined glories of the infinite and the raw realities of hard labor here on earth."

—SCOTT SPENCER, author of Man in the Woods