In Watkins's Battleborn, a short-story collection, we hear dispatches from the great, glittering American West---breathtaking, heartbreaking commentaries on the world today. (Plus one piece about forty-niners at Angels Camp, mere miles from the Sierra town my family hails from; "The Diggings," though of a different era than most other stories in the collection, made an odd sort of sense in that it, too, tells of great hopes dashed by the world's cruel venality.)
Beautiful writing; Watkins is certainly a writer I'll keep my eye on.