"A tightly-knit, compulsively readable tale...Davies' slender novel has all the heft of a sprawling western classic." --Booklist, starred review

"From a distance, West looks like a slim fable; but a closer view reveals a peculiarly American self-delusion, opening up like a vast prairie. Davies is an audaciously talented writer to watch." --Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"As in a lofty Bierstadt painting, Davies' slim novel presents a landscape of mystery and longing, of possibility and the hunt for the impossible....This is a book you could read in an afternoon. But you won't want to. Davies' prose is something you'll want to savor." --Suzie Eckl, Washington Independent Review of Books

"This small book is a visionary and beautiful fable of discovery and dreaming, along with some harsh truths about the reality of American history and its dreamers' lives...And the writing is astonishing, right to the heart-stopping end." --Sydney Morning Herald

"Moving, atmospheric." --Real Simple

"A page-turner that can stop you in your tracks to linger over a sentence...It's a bravura performance -- seasons come and go in a handful of words and there are masterful shifts of perspective and tense -- but Davies's artistry is matched by her storytelling powers, and her denouement is cheer-raisingly satisfying." --Daily Mail

"This small book is a visionary and beautiful fable of discovery and dreaming, along with some harsh truths about the reality of American history and its dreamers' lives...And the writing is astonishing, right to the heart-stopping end." --Sydney Morning Herald

"An engrossing work of historical fiction grappling with themes of vulnerability, longing and hope that transcend all contexts...West leaves the reader feeling as vulnerable and full of wonder as the book's main characters." --BookPage

"An exquisite debut that's short in length but steeped in the tall tales of American myth." --Lit Hub

"To read Carys Davies' West is to encounter a myth, or a potent dream--a narrative at once new and timeless. Exquisite, continent, utterly vivid, this short novel will live on in your imagination long after you read the last page." --Claire Messud, author of The Burning Girl and The Woman Upstairs

"West has all the stark power and immediacy of a folk-tale or a legend. It is also structured with great artistry, a beguiling sense of form and pace, and a depth in the way the characters are created, making clear that Carys Davies is a writer of immense talent." --Colm Tóibín, author of Brooklyn and House of Names

"A story of determination, betrayal, folly, and reckless hope written in the grand tradition of the pioneers. You enter the familiar American frontier and shortly are convinced, with Davies' hero, that the mammoths of the Pleistocene still shyly roam the Plains. The seams between imagination and history in this extraordinary story are invisible. I believed every word." --Salvatore Scibona, author of The End

"A multi-faceted gem of a book, West taps the spirit of the great quest novels of Twain, Melville, Cervantes, but with a gentle feminist twist and a fraction of the page count." --Toronto Star

"Short, incredible, violent, uplifting and empowering - how Davies manages to create such an enduring story in 150 pages is a mystery, but she nails it." --Stylist