Publisher's Synopsis
If you've gained your knowledge of the Wild West from Hollywood and history textbooks, your mage of the Western frontier is simple and clear: White men winning the West and saving helpless white future wives from outlaws or hostile Indians or Mexican bandidos.
You won't find that here. Here: U.S. Marshal Frederick Douglass fights invaders from outer space. A Navajo girl must thwart the god who threatens all she holds dear. A Hasidic high planes drifter faces New World bandits and Old Testament demons. A Catholic priest contends with a magic-wielding half-breed--or is she an indigenous spirit?--as the fate of the Canadian Métis province of Assiniboia hangs in the balance. Outcast women enter the Southwestern desert to die...or win their lady loves and great mecha steeds. A lost gunman may find himself in a Chinese gold miner's maze of mist and magic. Roving spirits and Civil War survivors and runaway factory slaves lose or find family or love in uncanny new guises. Hoboes rob a train of myth and dream. An Eastern city slicker may outsmart only himself in a contest with Old West magic. A black homesteader fights fae in defense of land and family. A werewolf-hunting frontier shapeshifter shatters every expectation. Steampunk airships may unite West and East--or leave them forever apart. The ascendant Aztec face endless destruction if the god of war triumphs. The South will rise again at the Alamo--if it can gain eerie otherworldly assistance. This anthology, like its predecessor, Lost Trails: Volume One, exists to recognize and celebrate the diverse realities of the historical West with excellent and entertaining Weird West stories. Welcome to the Weird West more realistic than many a mundane Western! Features stories by: Rie Sheridan Rose, Tobias S. Buckell, Sacchi Green, Misha Nogha, Rachel Manija Brown, Steven M. Suas, Ken Liu, Edward M. Erdelac, Sandra Odell, Don Webb, Vivian Caethe, Nicole Givens Kurtz, Rebecca McFarland Kyle, Bryan Nickelberry, Gemma Files, Ernest Hogan, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, David Lee Summers, and Aliette de Bodard
