The Devils That Have Come To Stay - Softcover

"This book is a real bird's-eye view of the gold rush. It captures a tumultuous time in California history: 'gold fever.' I am from the area and have been to these historic sites. In fact, my husband was a blacksmith docent in Coloma years ago. I think the book is quite poetically written." --Library Thing? "In her starkly beautiful, poetic novel The Devils That Have Come to Stay, Pamela DiFrancesco takes us into a dark and violent world that only gets darker with each turn of the pages. As an acid western, The Devils That Have Come to Stay turns the conventions of the traditional western upside down. In this novel, like other works in the genre, the white man isn't a hero; quite the opposite. And while the traditional western ends in triumph and glory, acid westerns end in disillusionment and worse. While this book satisfies within the parameters of the genre, it delivers on many other levels as well." --Beth Castrodale, Small Press Picks "Haunting and edgy, this Forty-Niner western reclaimed and radicalized for the 21st century is a debut novel by a writer to watch." --Siddhartha Deb, PEN Open Book Award--winning author of The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India "It is suspenseful, and you can tell the author did her research on mining in late 19th century California. It's the amount of care that was put into creating this story that makes it worth reading. Our nameless hero is three-dimensional and relatable, a great lead." --Kelly Smith "Pamela DiFrancesco's The Devils That Have Come to Stay explores the nature of greed and brutality. Its witness is never named, leaving this reader feeling slightly unmoored. It's appropriate, for the bartender can never trust what his eyes show him. DiFrancesco's acid Western is an intriguing combination of Jack London and Stephen King." --Historical Novel Society

In this stark Acid Western, the dark side of oft-glorified Gold Rush period in California is revealed when the Narrator, a nameless, fragile man in search of salvation, witnesses the brutality of western expansion. On a journey to meet up with his wife, who is taking care of her ailing mother, the Narrator witnesses the crossing of paths between a Native American man on a moral quest to right the wrongs of the Gold Rush and a desperate, fearsome stranger who has lost everything in his quest for gold. Along the way, Narrator's sensibilities shift and change, and his dark and troubled past emerges in glimpses he struggles to repress. Ultimately, he is left with a decision that will change not only his own life, but the lives of those around him.