That Old Ace in the Hole - by Annie Proulx (Paperback)

About the Book

Proulx's fourth novel is told through the eyes of Bob Dollar, a young Denver man trying to make good in a bad world. Robust, often bawdy, strikingly original and intimate, "That Old Ace in the Hole" tracks the vast waves of change that have shaped the American landscape and character over the past century.

Book Synopsis

From Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Annie Proulx comes an exhilarating story brimming with language, history, landscape, music, and love.

Bob Dollar is a young man from Denver trying to make good in a bad world. Out of college and aimless, Dollar takes a job with Global Pork Rind, scouting out big spreads of land that can be converted to hog farms. Soon he's holed up in a two-bit Texas town called Woolybucket, where he settles into LaVon Fronk's old bunkhouse for fifty dollars a month, helps out at Cy Frease's Old Dog Café, and learns the hard way how vigorously the old Texas ranch owners will hold on to their land, even when their children want no part of it.

Robust, often bawdy, strikingly original, That Old Ace in the Hole traces the waves of change that have shaped the American West over the past century--and in Bob Dollar, Proulx has created one of the most irrepressible characters in contemporary fiction.

Review Quotes

The Boston Globe [In] That Old Ace in the Hole, Proulx's hardscrabble wit and wisdom are heightened by the force of her language -- her bone-deep feel for its curves and crevices.

The New York Observer Proulx is our laureate of landscape, the expansive descriptions of natural phenomena worthy of Barry Lopez or Edward Hoagland. [Her] fiction has become even richer book by book. With this funny and haunting panorama...she has managed to outdo her previous outdoing.

USA Today Annie Proulx's writing is charged with wit -- alive, funny, packed with brilliantly original images.

About the Author

Annie Proulx is the author of nine books, including the novels The Shipping News and Barkskins, and the story collection Close Range. Her many honors include a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and a PEN/Faulkner award. Her story "Brokeback Mountain," which originally appeared in The New Yorker, was made into an Academy Award-winning film. Fen, Bog, and Swamp is her second work of nonfiction. She lives in New Hampshire.