DYING OUT WEST

About the Book

Haley Van Fleet’s paintings are coded memories, childhood terrors that she has disguised for herself as beauty. The result is a potent magic that attracts an offer from a gallery, but her old fears are stronger than ambition. She runs from the exposure of success and takes refuge in an affair with another artist, a photographer. They go west together to photograph places tourists never see, some of them dangerous. But danger becomes a kind of pleasure, and when they take illegal pictures on a missile range even explosions and military pursuit don’t spoil the fun. There is another, less expected, reward: defying real fear cures imaginary fear. But these lovers are cured too well, and when they face danger again they do not recognize it. Always hiding behind the camera they forget that they are in the picture too. They miss important warnings. The ‘perfect’, beautiful couple, they attract dangerous love, the kind deranged fans bestow on movie stars. Their ‘fan’ is childhood terror grown up, in his own way another artist, and when he catches Haley off guard she cannot forget it. She has no choice but to become a hunter herself and find the enemy.

About the Author

Short Biography Lloyd Guptill grew up in Newton, Massachusetts and attended Harvard College. During a year off from school he began traveling the United States and never stopped. The ideas for Dying Out West came from years of explorations, odd jobs and encounters with odd people. When he didn’t write about what he saw he painted it, sometimes from memory and sometimes from photographs. Lloyd Guptill is an animal lover and belongs to a group that gives refuge to homeless cats. He lives with his wife near the south coast of Massachusetts. They still travel.