{"product_id":"9781941729083","title":"Improbable Fortunes","description":"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the 2016 Laramie Awards for Western Fiction\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLonglisted for a Reading the West Book Award\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFinalist for the Colorado Book Award for Best Fiction\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFinalist for the High Plains Book Awards\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eImprobable Fortunes\u003c\/i\u003e, Jeffrey Price takes us on a wild ride into Vanadium, a dusty, down-on-its-heels mining town in southwest Colorado—where it would be fair to assume that nothing has ever happened. But you’d be wrong. As it turns out, quite a lot has happened, starting with a suspicious mudslide that destroys the town’s Main Street and a cowboy, Buster McCaffrey, arrested for the death of one of the richest men in America, Marvin Mallomar.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs the soon-to-retire Sheriff, Shep Dudival, investigates the circumstances surrounding the murder, it comes to light that Buster and Mallomar’s young wife were having a Cowboy Always Rings Twice affair. From there, Price takes this familiar story plot and turns it on its head—folding a rococo cast of Vanadium’s characters into a timeline that begins with Vanadium’s post-WWII labor strife and ends with the Kulturkampf of present day.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhile it may all seem humorous and surreal at first blush, one gets the feeling by \u003ci\u003eImprobable Fortunes’\u003c\/i\u003e unguessable conclusion that Price has used the fictitious town of Vanadium—a place without a recognizable gas station, a decent restaurant, or a clean bathroom—as the Rosetta Stone for something larger.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Rare Bird Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47044409983216,"sku":"9781941729083","price":24.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781941729083_p0.jpg?v=1763753644","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781941729083","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}