What Came West

The author of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize winning novel The Great Glass Sea returns with a gripping adventure story that probes the expansive, shifting wilds of the Sierra Nevada during the Gold Rush.

"Like a patient pine or ancient mineral, Josh Weil watches history and humanity in What Came West, with an attention that feels as monumental as the wilderness and wildness he transcendently portrays." -Samantha Hunt, author of The Unwritten Book

Sierra Nevada, 1840s, just before the Gold Rush ignites. Silas Hall has never belonged anywhere except the wild. Bullied as a child and uneasy even within his own family, he finds brief solace in love and fatherhood before the pull of the frontier overwhelms him. One day he vanishes west, chasing a life that might finally make sense.

What follows is a swift, pulse-pounding journey into the mountains, where Silas becomes one of the first white settlers to cross into the Sierra Nevada. He forges a precarious peace with the Indigenous people who live there-until the Gold Rush crashes in with violent force. As thousands flood the region, the balance shatters, and Silas commits a murder that alters the course of every life around him, including his own.

What Came West is a taut, atmospheric, and thrillingly propulsive novel that confronts many different forms of American inheritance, and it is alive with danger, emotional voltage, and an almost mythic momentum. It's a fierce, heart-driven portrait of an outsider racing toward belonging and barreling headlong into consequence.