“ EXILE ”

a novel by

samuel kinsella

available soon.

and though great beauty may mark the savagery of the nation, turning it a lighter shade than the blood it conveys, it still lingers and persists as a fountain of fire and brutality that shapes and erodes the earth beneath it, rotting and gnashing and tossing itself about with wild limbs until it capsizes into the sea.

SILAS CLARKE is a wanted man. after nearly dying in the texas revolution, he develops an unhealthy obsession with fire. in revenge against oilmen, the seeking of autonomy free of divine influence, evasion of the law, and a growing isolation, he seeks to blacken the lands of the developing american west. silas discovers that in trying to escape circumstance and the inevitable, the purveyors of false progress strangle all that do not serve them.

EXILE is a story of carnage, madness, civilization, the effects of war, death, the pursuit of individuality, and gray morality.

the sun hung a mile above the horizon and painted the sky a blood orange sending every shadow far beyond its origin scorching each drifted billowing cloud a deep and cruel red over the crowd. they gathered to watch a man lynched at the gallows, to watch a man cease his breathing and the beating of his heart and the pumping of blood through his veins, to see their idea of justice enacted on who they saw fit to enact justice on. the stage was a shoddily constructed dry mesquite that creaked and wobbled under the weight of the men who stood on it, the scaffold tore into the sky above the sentenced man and held the coarse rope he was to be hanged with. he was sentenced to be hanged by the neck until death or garroted for the crime of damage to property. the property was his own until the oilman who stood front center of the crowd bought out the land beneath his ranch to harvest the rich blood of the earth. the man standing under the scaffold had no intent to sell his land to the oilman, of the few possessions he held, his land was the most valuable. with denial of the offer on the land came inexplicable hardships to his daily operations. a fire had started in his barn and set most of his animals free, and some that escaped later appeared rotting in his well and poisoning the water. with time the hardships slowed and in an attempt to begin to rebuild the barn he knocked down the blackened supports of the old structure. but the land was bought and in this he was ruled as some squatter, a bitter man who regretted selling his land and still resided on land that was no longer his, and was now destroying the property of the oilman. so there he stood above the trapdoor only held up by the rusted latch below the stage, praying for some miracle to save him. no miracle came, and as some bought off lawman reached the end of his speech the heavy breathless silence was shattered by the crack of the lever and the snap of the latch and the swinging of the door and the bubbled pop of the vertebrae in the man’s neck, but where the slow creak of rope would follow noises like these, there instead was a mad thrashing, a series of yells and gasps from the hanged man. a man driven by compassion and disgust in the crowd raised his pistol and aimed at the hanged man’s head, but the oilman pushed the gun back to the ground. he thrashed there creaking the mesquite and the rope for an eternity, calling for help in whatever mangled way he could until the breath was too costly to expel to the crowd. his legs kicked with less veracity as the seconds passed tiring with every motion until finally the creak of the rope was heard above anything else. a hymn sung of god’s goodness was played as the crowd left the gallows and went about their business, now tired of the spectacle of death.