* Life Is a Country Western Song plants Barnes’s talents in his own backyard, and much like his collection, Gunning for Ho: Vietnam Stories, he departs assuredly from tropes while simultaneously using the reader’s expectations to his advantage

* this timely collection paints a clear and objective portrait of contemporary working-class Americans that are not dolts, but free-thinkers, high-spirited and longing for something better

Wrought with empathy, precision and a steady finger on the pulse of the complexities facing today’s changing, often turbulent West, Barnes’s stories show a writer at the apex of his craft, offering an updated take on a West that is rapidly descending into the annals of legend.