BOOKS
The Saints of Rattlesnake Mountain
“Questions of faith and absolution fuel this evocative collection of meticulously crafted stories, all set in the contemporary American Southwest... Waters offers a diversity of thought and feeling worthy of his complex setting.”
—Publishers Weekly, boxed, starred review
“With The Saints of Rattlesnake Mountain, Don Waters once again shows us why he’s one of the most original and exciting voices to come out of the West.”
—Willy Vlautin
"He may just be the Flannery O'Connor of the Southwest."
—Southwestern American Literature
Sunland
“Don Waters’s novel is a zany adventure, a borderland thrill ride through the super-saturated Sonoran desert led by a rakish tour guide. A witty riot from first page to last!”
—Claire Vaye Watkins, author of Battleborn
“Sunland couldn’t be more relevant to the issues of our time, delving into everything from drug smuggling, narcocartels, race relations, healthcare, and immigration. It’s an immersive, tough, funny, and propulsive bildungsroman, beautifully written, evoking the landscapes of Tucson and Sonora and everything in between with scorching authenticity.”
—Don Lee, author of The Collective
Portland Oregonian Top 10
Northwest Book of 2013
Desert Gothic
Iowa Short Fiction Award
“Don Waters locates the decency in the undersung. He does a brilliant job of showing the small heroic acts that reverberate in the lives of his characters and in the mind of a reader.”
—Amy Hempel
"The prose in this wonderful collection of stories is as sneaky as the landscape it depicts. It is also as harsh and as beautiful. The characters here are weird and remarkably drawn. I read these stories with much pleasure."
—Percival Everett
"Here are ten beautifully rendered worlds, ten opportunities for the reader to be transformed. You'll want to own a first edition of Desert Gothic. He's the real deal."
—John McNally