The Winter Family - Softcover

Longlisted for the 2015 Giller Prize

"Calculating and poetic . . . holds you with a compelling brutality from which it is impossible to turn away." --Craig Johnson, New York Times bestselling author of the Walt Longmire mysteries

"Capable of standing in [Cormac McCarthy's] company, which is high praise indeed. The Winter Family is a philosophical spaghetti western that doesn't stint on the tomato sauce, served up with flair." --Quill & Quire (starred review)

"Sadistic but mesmerizing. . . . From the first rifle shot to the last burned body." --The New York Times Book Review

"Stink and filth, corruption and depravity, lawlessness and unruliness. . . . [Augustus Winter is] as fascinating as any other complicatedly deadly thing." --The Globe and Mail

"The adventures of a gleefully nihilistic group of outlaws. . . . Brutal, at times darkly funny, and utterly gripping from the first page to the last." --Scott Smith, New York Times bestselling author of A Simple Plan and The Ruins

"A blood-soaked historical western covering over three decades of mayhem. . . . [A] vivid portrayal of men who choose violence and lawlessness as their way of life, and the justifications they create to rationalize their immoral behavior. This is a chilling tale." --Publishers Weekly

"A wild ride into the conflict between freedom and civilization written in brains and blood. . . . This book is a round house punch of awesome. It came out of nowhere and tackled me into the dirt." --Michael D. Griffiths, SFReader.com

"Enormously enjoyable." --Literary Review of Canada

"Satisfyingly violent." --The Toronto Star

"Bloodletting as philosophical exercise, and not for the faint of heart." --Kirkus Reviews

"Brutal. Nihilistic. Extreme. Clifford Jackman's debut, The Winter Family, lit my synapses up like a pinball machine. I joined golden-eyed Augustus Winter and his band of merry sociopaths on their journey through the dying West, civilization squeezing in from every angle--this is a raw, blood-splattered picaresque that I enjoyed immensely. Jackman throws nine kinds of hell at you in this book, unloading with both barrels, and never lets up the intensity." --Craig Davidson, author of Cataract City

After being court-martialed for their actions during the Civil War, a band of hardened Union soldiers recast themselves as outlaws. Among these twisted men who’ve found brotherhood in battle are a psychopathic killer, a mean, moronic pair of brothers, an impassive ex-slave, a dangerous child prodigy and, at the malevolent center, their cold, stoic leader: Augustus Winter, a man with an almost pathological resistance to society's rules and a preternatural gift for butchery that is matched only by his eerie charisma.
 
From political thuggery during a Chicago election to work as bounty hunters in the deserts of Arizona, Winter and his crew follow a grim, borderland morality that plays out, time and again, in ruthless carnage.