Beyond the flinty glitz of a Hollywood-imagined American West of two-dimensional characters are the town of Taos, New Mexico, at the intersection of the mystical and the rational; tide pools on the remote Oregon Coast; a house amid tumbleweeds in Midland, Texas; Bigfoot sightings in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains; and a deep-fried pickle served at a Route 66 roadside stand in Arizona. This is where Kicking the Loose Stones Home goes in search of starting points for a genuine America—for a glimpse of ourselves and others who have made the West their home.

Kicking the Loose Stones Home is a romp across Big Empty—the American West where the authentic story of the region began in dreams, in possibilities, and often morphed into devastating challenges. This landscape of unreachable horizons, daunting paradoxes, aridity, and crippling contradictions is still unknown territory to a bicoastal society that has only experienced the region out the window of a passenger jet. Paul VanDevelder’s propulsive and kaleidoscopic essays give a sense of the West we want as well as the West we have created, with all the messiness, uncertainty, and joy that life in a tough place produces.