"Questions of faith and absolution fuel this evocative collection of meticulously crafted stories, all set in the contemporary American Southwest. In the title story, an inmate working on a cattle ranch struggles to resolve the spiritual limitations of his imprisonment with the geographical vastness that surrounds him. Two altar boys try to medicate their way through the godless adult playground of Reno in “Last Rites,” while a bodybuilding veteran tracks down a younger sister pawned by his father for drugs in “Espanola.” The collection only grows more impressive as it progresses, shrinking its scope while expanding the possibilities of its language. In the brief, excellent “Deborah,” for instance, a self-destructive widower rescues dogs from abuse, while “Two Kinds of Temples” juxtaposes a brief affair at a natural spring retreat with the life of a hotel worker. “Full of Days” stands as the collection’s high point, following one man’s quest to erect an antiabortion billboard along a Las Vegas freeway. Waters (Sunland) offers a diversity of thought and feeling worthy of his complex setting."
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“A collection of nine superbly crafted short stories, this third book by Waters set in the Southwest (Sunland; Desert Gothic) reminds us that this is not the old Southwest of pioneers and gunfighters but an updated view of broken neighborhoods and rundown lives. …Tough but vulnerable, all of Waters’s characters have been short-changed by life but still cling to something meaningful while coexisting with the intense landscape of the Southwest. Verdict: This Iowa Short Fiction Award winner offers original, overpowering pieces; a sure-to-please collection of both beauty and sadness.”
—Library Journal
"Don Waters's third short-story collection, The Saints of Rattlesnake Mountain, is a literary exploration of what survives in the shadow of the Valley of Death. These nine stories take place in locations throughout the Southwest and explore the wasted, sometimes austere emotions of people who are trying to survive inner landscapes as harsh as those without. Throughout this collection, Waters captures the story's protagonist just after the fulcrum of his life has shifted toward the dire and follows them as they're brutally tested. What's revealed in these stories, as so often in life, is that 'the only thing separating well-being from danger [is] a line in the sand'."
—Foreword Reviews
“It is a moving and stunning volume… He may just be the Flannery O’Connor of the Southwest.”
—Southwestern American Literature
“With The Saints of Rattlesnake Mountain, Don Waters once again shows us why he’s one of the most original and exciting voices to come out of the West.”
―Willy Vlautin, author of The Motel Life and The Free
"In Don Waters' new short story collection, The Saints of Rattlesnake Mountain, he casts his characters into demanding emotional situations—a convict working to win early release; a woman traumatized by her husband's death at the hands of terrorists; a 30-something given a terminal diagnosis—and then doubles down by placing them in unforgiving desert settings. His nine protagonists fumble as best as they can toward finding meaning in their lives; faith, or their lack of it, is also a central theme."
—The Oregonian
“In this marvelous collection, the institutions of (American) western civilization are interrogated and unveiled, be it military, religious, familial, corporate, or correctional. Waters’ characters inhabit the challenge of the essential conflicts: man vs. nature, man vs. man, man vs. self, and usually simultaneously. The simmering pain and anger of these people is balanced by their humor, humiliations, temporary successes, heart-breaking failures, and mostly, by the clear affection with which they’re rendered. These stories capture not only the inhabitants of the desert west, but the landscape’s harsh and stately beauty, its expanse and solitude, and the ever-present sense that a person within it is always at its mercy—merciless and merciful by equal measure.”
―Antonya Nelson, author of Funny Once and Bound
“The Saints of Rattlesnake Mountain is shot through with intense hunger and huge heart, written by a writer whose talent is big enough to handle both. Don Waters crafts seemingly straight-ahead stories that turn in ways both surprising and perfect, and wind up so richly complex you’ll want to shut your eyes and sit a while contemplating each. There’s wisdom here and a gentleness of spirit that makes this a strikingly meaningful, deeply affecting book.”
—Josh Weil, author of The Great Glass Sea
“In the barren strip malls of Las Vegas or on lonely Southwest plains, Don Waters’ characters are driven by colossal questions about faith and meaning. A convict about to be paroled discovers that confinement has restored him to what he calls the Word. An ex-Catholic remembers a friend who saves a man from suicide by praying. In the story “Full of Days,” a man puts up billboards against abortion in Las Vegas and befriends a pregnant woman. Waters’ characters believe they’ve experienced cosmic answers to cosmic questions and go to extremes to hold onto those answers. The convict discovers a startling reversal to freedom. A woman gradually lets a lion bite off her hand, “feeling a pain so true as to convince her of meaning.” The Catholic Church is an inanimate character in many of these stories, standing less for Catholicism than for the promise of answers. Priests also appear as real and vulnerable people. In “The Day of the Dead,” a remarkable story, terminally ill people meet in Tijuana to commit suicide, and a dying priest tries to abandon his plan. Another priest is a genuine rock for two boys, but probably had sex with a dying mother. Many of Waters’ characters are self-appointed messengers, grandiose in their sense of mission, extreme in their solutions. Struggles with meaning are usually contained, but Waters’ characters express their interior lives, making their concerns concrete and the stories allegorical.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Don Waters sets his fine recent story collection, The Saints of Rattlesnake Mountain, in a Southwest somewhere in the neighborhood of Breaking Bad’s Albuquerque. Waters’ territory features less violence and more spiritual reflection, but its contours are familiar. . . In many of these stories, Waters writes from the perspective of a character that few readers would have natural sympathy for — the deadbeat dad, the masochistic animal lady, a convict, an anti-abortion zealot. By drawing the reader into their worlds and their beliefs, Waters evokes a grudging respect for their choices and their right to live the way they want to live out in the open West, amid landscapes that make a human being feel ‘like a loosened molecule without boundary.’”
—High Country News
