Farewell, Cowboy

Ruzinava (Rusty), named for her rust-coloured hair, is drifting in Zagreb, bored at work and involved with a man who is married, when a phone call from her sister brings her back to look after their ageing mother. In the summer of 200X she returns to Staro Naselje, a dusty little town on the Dalmatian coast that she and her brother once turned into the Wild West of their father's cowboy stories. Her father, his lungs ruined by asbestos at the cement works, is long dead, and four years ago her younger brother Danijel, worn down by a cruel and intolerant town, took his own life. She sets out to learn what happened in his last days and to find the words he left for someone outside the family, crossing paths with the Iroquois Brothers, a local tycoon and false heroes, in a story of violence and of outsiders, told in dense fragments that jump through time.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

206 pages in the original

Genres

Family, Coming of age (assigned by AI)

Set in

Croatia

First published

2010 by Algoritam

Author's age

36 when first published

ISBN

9789533161143 (original)

9781908236487 (Istros Books, United Kingdom)

9781940450490 (McSweeney's, United States)

9789535200406 (V.B.Z., Croatia)