The Grand Canyon can only be visited in replica form. An archivist preserves a rare map of a vanished Lake Tahoe. A Utah cliff dwelling survives as an aging roadside attraction in California. Recapture is a collection of short fiction about the once and future West. 

"Erica Olsen gives us the dream life of the Southwest in this striking collection, a landscape told in language as spare and pungent and exacting as the desert itself. A swift and lovely debut from a writer of real gifts." —Kevin Canty, author of Where the Money Went

"These sly, heartbreaking stories capture the modern West, where the past is ever-present and the future is already here." —Alison Baker, author of How I Came West, and Why I Stayed

"Like all good narratives, Erica Olsen’s 'Grand Canyon II' suggests great consequence. The past is another country. The task of memory is impossible. No one exists and nothing ever happened. But somewhere in your brain, a beautiful lie is being spun…."
  —Sarah Manguso, author of The Guardians

"Unsentimental stories that tell us what the American West looks like now and what we've lost..."  —Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

"This is fiction that Edward Abbey would approve and celebrate..." —Andrew C. Gottlieb, Terrain

"Recapture is a living, breathing museum of natural wonders. With writing as spare as the landscape she evokes, Olsen wades through the detritus of the human experience and finds clarity there, and some magic, too." —Molly Falck, ZYZZYVA blog

"Olsen has figured out what exists at the core of the sexual power of the taciturn cowboy, and she deploys it repeatedly and effectively. These are sexy stories that are never explicit ..." —Gabriel Tomasulo, Tottenville Review, A new book review collaborative




Website copyright 2012-2021 Erica Olsen. 
Recapture book design: Jeff Fuller

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