Thank you, thank you, thank you, and I love you, to my husband and best friend Jeremy Leipert. Thank you to my adored family, especially my mother, Patricia Caple. I hope I make you proud. Thank you to my ideal in-laws. Thank you to my children, Cassius and Imogen Leipert, for keeping me from sliding off the world into the chaos of my imagination. Thank you (always) old friend, Nick Kazamia.
I am very grateful for the financial support of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Department of English and the University of Calgary, a Ralph Steinhauer Award of Distinction, a Ruby University Anniversary Award, several Queen Elizabeth the Second awards and the A.T.J. Cairns Memorial Graduate Scholarship.
Advance praise for In Calamity’s Wake
“Echoes of The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje and Away by Amy Bloom reverberate in Natalee Caple’s brilliant poetic novel about the daughter of Calamity Jane seeking her mother. Her lyric gifts place Natalee Caple in the top tier of contemporary Canadian writers.”
—Susan Swan, author of The Western Light
“Haunting and hallucinatory, Natalee Caple’s In Calamity’s Wake is a rich collage of sweeping myth and searing historical detail. Packed with the requisite big skies, barroom raconteurs and bullet wounds of an epic Western, the story of Miette and Calamity Jane is also personal and timeless, echoing our own futile attempts to know and understand even the people we love. This novel will have you asking ‘What is true? What is legend?’ long after the fire is out and the embers have gone cold.”
—Miranda Hill, author of Sleeping Funny
“Eloquent, earthy and evocative, this gorgeously written, dream-like novel is a delight. Caple’s voice is enchanting and her perspective on the mythology of Calamity Jane enthralling.”
—Lauren B. Davis, Giller Prize—longlisted author of Our Daily Bread
“Detail by detail, line by line, we are given Calamity Jane, the American Badlands, Deadwood, ghosts, thieves, a madwoman and a daughter on a visceral quest to find her mother. Mythic, real, compelling—this is a sumptuous feast of storytelling.”
—Richard Wagamese, author of Indian Horse
“In Calamity’s Wake does what the historical novel is meant to do. It creates a seamless meld of fact and invention. Just as Calamity created her own life, Caple recreates it—and with the same bravado and panache. An intriguing reversal of the damage of mythmaking, restoring the pilfered heart and soul of Calamity Jane to the flesh and blood woman.”
—Pauline Holdstock, Giller Prize—longlisted author of Into the Heart of the Country
Copyright
In Calamity’s Wake
Copyright © 2013 by Natalee Caple.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © FEBRUARY 2013 ISBN: 978-1-443-40672-7
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
FIRST EDITION
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
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ISBN 978-1-44340-670-3
Cover design: Ingrid Paulson
Cover photo: Rob Daugherty/Getty Images
Author photo: Julie Gagne Photography
RRD 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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