Letters From the Horse Latitudes

Praise & Reviews

“Set in Mexico and the American Southwest, Mr. Smith's stories have a rugged informality. Their sense of intimacy is so great that the reader feels he has uncovered a cache of personal letters or is overhearing a late-night conversation between friends. And yet, like the stories of O. Henry, each is cleverly contrived to capture some essence of life and also to make a point. Today most O. Henry stories read like antiques, dependent for their effects on credulous readers and illuminated with false optimism. But the world that Mr. Smith dramatizes is both contemporary and convincing.”

— New York Times

“This is a collection of gems.... This book is highly recommended."

-  Austin American-Statesman;

“Penetrating, at times devastating in their insight, the stories that make up Letters from the Horse Latitudes will expand C. W. Smith's reputation as a significant voice in contemporary American fiction.”

– Lawrence Wright, author of Saints & Sinners, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11; and Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, & The Prison of Belief.

“One of the pleasures of reading is discovering a new author, someone who writes with talent and verve and who is able to create some of those truly rare literary moments when the reader is absolutely lost in the richness of a story. So...meet C.W. Smith...whose wonderful new short-story collection, Letters From the Horse Latitudes, is wonderful enough to meet the most exacting reader standards. Smith's ability to climb inside the minds of his characters is exceptional; there are no one-dimensional cutouts to be found. No one is perfect, no one is quite satisfied, no conclusion is the end if anything other than some of life's ongoing episodes. And that's that magic here - instead of laboring to force unmistakable important themes on; his readers, Smith just wants us to climb aboard with his quirky cast of characters and see if we can't learn a little from their experiences.”

— Fort Worth Star Telegram

“The stories of C. W. Smith deal with a good many of our deeper hurts and worries—divorce, respon­sibility, displacement, the lost golden moment when things might have gone differently—with hu­mor, love and remarkable grace. A collection of many and varied pleasures.

- -Beverly Lowry, author of The Track of Real Desires, The Perfect Sonya, and Crossed Over: A Murder, Memoir.

“C. W. Smith writes stories the way old-timey gunslingers and newly minted sexpots walk—with graceful authority and an absolute indifference to the cowards and prudes they're obliged to share the planet with.

—Lee Abbott, author of Living After Midnight, Dreams of Distant Lives, and All Things At Once: New and Selected Stories.

"C.W.  Smith's stories are a joy to read. Earthy, violent, unpredictable, they evoke the modern Southwest and provincial Mexico with the cool eye of a social chronicler and the compassionate vision of an artist. Letters from the Horse Latitudes is an ambitious, powerful collection."

- Greg Johnson, author of Pagan Babies, Last Encounter with the Enemy, and Women I’ve Known: New and Selected Stories.               

“Like the changeable winds and sudden calms in the horse latitudes of the title, these stories are by turns fanciful and frightening.  In the first several stories, readers will delight in Smith's recreation of the recent past while they recognize that he takes us further than mere nostalgia. Smith renders the textures and voices of his fictional territory — Oklahoma, Texas, New and old Mexico— with the authority of a native poet and with images as startling and potent as his rugged landscapes. The writer's sensibility that hovers over even the darkest of these stories is unmistakably compassionate and reassuringly wise.” 

 - Allen Wier, author of Tejano, Blanco, and Things About to Disappear.

“The novelist in Smith makes the characterizations in this, his first published collection of short stories, humane and instantly familiar. Horse Latitudes is billed as a work that wrestles with the issue of race, class, and culture, but the best of the stories track what could be seen as one man's evolution...Vivid and emotionally honest, these stories are a joy to read.”

— Texas Monthly

“The writing in Mr. Smith's collection is strong, not showy, and demonstrates a good eye for original detail. The ability of humans to loose their way has never been much in doubt; the stories in Letters From the Horse Latitudes document that phenomenon convincingly. But just as important, the stories seem to provide some hope that, once lost, we can get our bearings again, and go on to find our way."

— Dallas Morning News