The recollections and yarns, historical meditations and reportage brought together in Mountain Blood display a sensibility formed by the harsh, outlandishly beautiful terrain of the American West. Will Baker's tales spring from an imagination shaped by wild, circuitous mealtime stories of prospectors and from the bitter history of a place where suburban ranch houses dot the vast sweep of land.

WILL BAKER (1935-2005) was a professor of English at the University of California, Davis. His books include Backward: An Essay on Indians, Time, and Photography and Tony and the Cows: A True Story from the Range Wars.