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Southern Revivals
Walk Me to the Distance
Not yet published
Expected 1 Jul 25‘Everett has mastered the movement between unspeakable terror and knock out comedy� �
The New York Times
David Larson can never go home.
His parents are dead. His sister and her hippie husband, staunchly anti-war, won't even have the newly returned Vietnam veteran in the house. So Larson takes his chances on the road, travelling west from Georgia until he breaks down in the nowhere town of Slut’s Hole, Wyoming.
There he finds lodging with Chloë Sixbury, a one-legged sexagenarian widow, and her disabled son. Their ersatz family is complete when Larson takes in Butch, a Vietnamese girl abandoned at the highway rest stop where he works, but at the edge of this tableau lingers the unmistakable spectre of violence.
Blending the grotesquerie of the Southern Gothic with the Western's codes of frontier justice, in Walk Me to the Distance Percival Everett renders a vivid and haunting landscape of the American badlands, where cruelty is the lingua franca.
Part of the Picador Collection, a series celebrating fifty years of Picador books and showcasing the best of modern literature.
Read Percival's Booker Prize-shortlisted novel James in paperback now.
David Larson can never go home.
His parents are dead. His sister and her hippie husband, staunchly anti-war, won't even have the newly returned Vietnam veteran in the house. So Larson takes his chances on the road, travelling west from Georgia until he breaks down in the nowhere town of Slut’s Hole, Wyoming.
There he finds lodging with Chloë Sixbury, a one-legged sexagenarian widow, and her disabled son. Their ersatz family is complete when Larson takes in Butch, a Vietnamese girl abandoned at the highway rest stop where he works, but at the edge of this tableau lingers the unmistakable spectre of violence.
Blending the grotesquerie of the Southern Gothic with the Western's codes of frontier justice, in Walk Me to the Distance Percival Everett renders a vivid and haunting landscape of the American badlands, where cruelty is the lingua franca.
Part of the Picador Collection, a series celebrating fifty years of Picador books and showcasing the best of modern literature.
Read Percival's Booker Prize-shortlisted novel James in paperback now.
- GenresLiteratureNovels
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First published January 1, 1985
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620 people want to read
About the author
Percival Everett
72Ìýbooks7,064ÌýfollowersPercival L. Everett (born 1956) is an American writer and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.
There might not be a more fertile mind in American fiction today than Everett’s. In 22 years, he has written 19 books, including a farcical Western, a savage satire of the publishing industry, a children’s story spoofing counting books, retellings of the Greek myths of Medea and Dionysus, and a philosophical tract narrated by a four-year-old.
The Washington Post has called Everett “one of the most adventurously experimental of modern American novelists.� And according to The Boston Globe, “He’s literature’s NASCAR champion, going flat out, narrowly avoiding one seemingly inevitable crash only to steer straight for the next.�
Everett, who teaches courses in creative writing, American studies and critical theory, says he writes about what interests him, which explains his prolific output and the range of subjects he has tackled. He also describes himself as a demanding teacher who learns from his students as much as they learn from him.
Everett’s writing has earned him the PEN USA 2006 Literary Award (for his 2005 novel, Wounded), the Academy Award for Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award (for his 2001 novel, Erasure), the PEN/Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature (for his 1996 story collection, Big Picture) and the New American Writing Award (for his 1990 novel, Zulus). He has served as a judge for, among others, the 1997 National Book Award for fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1991.
There might not be a more fertile mind in American fiction today than Everett’s. In 22 years, he has written 19 books, including a farcical Western, a savage satire of the publishing industry, a children’s story spoofing counting books, retellings of the Greek myths of Medea and Dionysus, and a philosophical tract narrated by a four-year-old.
The Washington Post has called Everett “one of the most adventurously experimental of modern American novelists.� And according to The Boston Globe, “He’s literature’s NASCAR champion, going flat out, narrowly avoiding one seemingly inevitable crash only to steer straight for the next.�
Everett, who teaches courses in creative writing, American studies and critical theory, says he writes about what interests him, which explains his prolific output and the range of subjects he has tackled. He also describes himself as a demanding teacher who learns from his students as much as they learn from him.
Everett’s writing has earned him the PEN USA 2006 Literary Award (for his 2005 novel, Wounded), the Academy Award for Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award (for his 2001 novel, Erasure), the PEN/Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature (for his 1996 story collection, Big Picture) and the New American Writing Award (for his 1990 novel, Zulus). He has served as a judge for, among others, the 1997 National Book Award for fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1991.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
November 2, 2022
I enjoyed Percival Everett's latest novel, Trees, so much I decided to read all of his books. I had somehow gotten the idea that this author was too...what? Brainy, deep? Well, he is all that but he sure knows how to give the reader a good time!
Walk Me to the Distance is actually his second novel. It is a wonderful study of the disillusioned Vietnam vet and a deep dive into the Wild West that still existed on the plains of Wyoming in 1970s America.
Rough, with its own codes of behavior. Vast with its big sky. I met characters I will never forget: David, the veteran; Sixbury, a one-legged, widow-lady sheep rancher; and a little Vietnamese war orphan who gets dropped into the vet's lap.
From that point on it gets more complicated every day as the frontier code comes up against a changing world. The novel was the perfect follow-up to the last book I read, Ennemonde.
Walking to the distance is a saying that means walking as far as one can see across the plains.
Walk Me to the Distance is actually his second novel. It is a wonderful study of the disillusioned Vietnam vet and a deep dive into the Wild West that still existed on the plains of Wyoming in 1970s America.
Rough, with its own codes of behavior. Vast with its big sky. I met characters I will never forget: David, the veteran; Sixbury, a one-legged, widow-lady sheep rancher; and a little Vietnamese war orphan who gets dropped into the vet's lap.
From that point on it gets more complicated every day as the frontier code comes up against a changing world. The novel was the perfect follow-up to the last book I read, Ennemonde.
Walking to the distance is a saying that means walking as far as one can see across the plains.
June 20, 2017
A little short of one of my favorite Everett novels, for a couple different reasons. For one, having a developmentally disabled villain is cringe-worthy in 2017, and that's not a word I like to use in conjunction with Percival Everett but that's nonetheless where things are at. Plus it doesn't tie together its disparate threads - David's love for middle-of-nowhere Wyoming and his roommate Sixbury, David's sister's efforts to put him at the head of a Vietnam Veterans' rights group, the sudden appearance of a group of war orphans in Wyoming, the goings-on with said developmentally disabled villain... yeah, there's a lot going on here - as well as he did with later novels like or , nor does he buy the slight sense of disorganization with the picaresque approach of . Yet David himself takes on a life of his own, and Everett has a deep understanding of his inner conflicts and impulses, and the guy's isolation in both his native Georgia and, as the novel goes on, his adopted home Wyoming are so real they'll bleed when you scratch them. This ultimately strikes me as a lesser work by a great author, but even then, it's worth your time. I don't know if Everett is quite the best living novelist in the United States, but he's definitely the best one that isn't frequently mentioned among that company.
October 15, 2011
I loved reading this book. It's the kind of stuff that you wish Denis Johnson would be capable of when writing about characters other than himself. A brutally honest, torn-open voice, shocked and aggrieved by the world but still adult and making do, carving out a place for itself. The voice is appropriate to the story, which centers on a young man returning from service in Vietnam and settling down quite randomly in a small town in Wyoming. Everett isn't afraid to oscillate unpredictably between comedy, violence, and emotional discomfort. The ending doesn't necessarily work, but who cares. I imagine Everett's intention was to evoke the feeling of the landscape of Wyoming in narrative and language, and he pulled it off.
July 3, 2024
A very humble, quiet novel with a lithesome naturalist air to it. It’s nice to have a love story that doesn’t revolve around carnal rubby-rubby—there are too few of them. As only his second novel, it is better constructed than Suder and a crucial step toward his major evolution, Cutting Lisa. Not a bad accomplishment considering that the opening tableau of the novel is pretty much identical to First Blood. None of that Rambo hippie shit here, just a Vietnam vet acclimating without the assistance of an outrageously huge knife. File under: Aww.
August 13, 2020
What in the hell did I just read??! I don't even know how to rate this book. Brutal and perverse, wooden characters, choppy chapters, abrupt ending. Bizarre.
October 7, 2022
Walk Me to the Distance, Percival Everett's second novel, is a harder read than his first. I can envision some Suder fans having to reset expectations about this young author, and it is interesting to see that from the outset Everett was throwing curveballs and redefining genres.
Walk Me to the Distance reexamines the Western. It is spare and unsparing; no dashing heroes and clearcut villains here. The novel follows a Vietnam vet who has just returned from the war and ends up in Wyoming. Everett lets him live on a ranch, this is a Western after all, and there is a one-legged old woman and horses and a posse. But the vet is no cowboy; he finds work as a highway rest stop attendant.
The author is adept at letting the characters' words and actions define them, never succumbing to the temptation to add other explanations for the reader. Conversations are fragmentary and bounce around. A lot happens between chapters, between pages, between sentences.
I'm still percolating on this one. I'm currently rounding up to four stars from 3.5.
Walk Me to the Distance reexamines the Western. It is spare and unsparing; no dashing heroes and clearcut villains here. The novel follows a Vietnam vet who has just returned from the war and ends up in Wyoming. Everett lets him live on a ranch, this is a Western after all, and there is a one-legged old woman and horses and a posse. But the vet is no cowboy; he finds work as a highway rest stop attendant.
The author is adept at letting the characters' words and actions define them, never succumbing to the temptation to add other explanations for the reader. Conversations are fragmentary and bounce around. A lot happens between chapters, between pages, between sentences.
I'm still percolating on this one. I'm currently rounding up to four stars from 3.5.
November 24, 2024
I started my reading of Everett's books with his latest, James, have backtracked into several others, and hope to read everything in time.
This book has all the humor, mystique and tension of Telephone and Erasure. Early on, I was amused with the name of the town David lands in by accident: Slut Hole, WY. Very quickly the story evolves like a kaleidoscope into pathos, yearning, anger, confusion and even love, and back again. Like other of the author's novels, there is no resolution at the end. We are left to imagine what the characters' futures hold. Oddly enough, this is somewhat satisfying.
The writing style is spare and leaves much unsaid, absolutely appropriate to the subject matter, characters and wild west setting.
This book has all the humor, mystique and tension of Telephone and Erasure. Early on, I was amused with the name of the town David lands in by accident: Slut Hole, WY. Very quickly the story evolves like a kaleidoscope into pathos, yearning, anger, confusion and even love, and back again. Like other of the author's novels, there is no resolution at the end. We are left to imagine what the characters' futures hold. Oddly enough, this is somewhat satisfying.
The writing style is spare and leaves much unsaid, absolutely appropriate to the subject matter, characters and wild west setting.
Read
December 10, 2023Walk Me to the Distance is dark. It has some similarities to Wounded, another of Everett's books. Of the books of his I've read, this is the least subtle study of human capabilities, of the anti-hero, a consistent theme of Everett’s.
I have to think more about this haunting story, before I care to say more. It leaves a lot for the reader to resolve.
I have to think more about this haunting story, before I care to say more. It leaves a lot for the reader to resolve.
June 12, 2023
I am continuing my read through the novel of Percival Everett. I haven't hit a clinker yet. This is his second novel. It was published in 1985.
David Larson has just come back from Vietnam. Everett explains that "he returned as unremarkable as he had been when he left." He doesn't feel right about going back to his hometown in Georgia so he heads off across country. He ends up with a busted radiator in Slut's Hole, Wyoming and decides to stay.
He slowly settles in. He gets a room with an older woman and her "retarded" son and a job tending to a highway rest area. He begins to get enmeshed into this remote world. The people are hard but friendly. They tend not to ask too many questions and he starts to feel comfortable.
Everett is excellent at capturing a character with a few laconic lines of dialog. He slowly weaves in the violence and dark sides of this world. Larson tries to be a good man, but the challenge gets very complicated, particularly when, almost by chance, he ends up responsible for a grammar school aged Vietnamese girl who gets abandoned at the rest stop.
This is the first of the six Everett novels I have read where the protagonist is not black. It is still, however, about a man who is an outsider trying to fit in.
This does not have as much of the humor of his more recent books, and it has none of the surreal or slapstick that is in them. This is a very well-done character study built on a strong story and a fully realized setting.
David Larson has just come back from Vietnam. Everett explains that "he returned as unremarkable as he had been when he left." He doesn't feel right about going back to his hometown in Georgia so he heads off across country. He ends up with a busted radiator in Slut's Hole, Wyoming and decides to stay.
He slowly settles in. He gets a room with an older woman and her "retarded" son and a job tending to a highway rest area. He begins to get enmeshed into this remote world. The people are hard but friendly. They tend not to ask too many questions and he starts to feel comfortable.
Everett is excellent at capturing a character with a few laconic lines of dialog. He slowly weaves in the violence and dark sides of this world. Larson tries to be a good man, but the challenge gets very complicated, particularly when, almost by chance, he ends up responsible for a grammar school aged Vietnamese girl who gets abandoned at the rest stop.
This is the first of the six Everett novels I have read where the protagonist is not black. It is still, however, about a man who is an outsider trying to fit in.
This does not have as much of the humor of his more recent books, and it has none of the surreal or slapstick that is in them. This is a very well-done character study built on a strong story and a fully realized setting.
April 20, 2022
Percival Everett may be the greatest novelist you've never heard of. I heard his name for the first time while watching the National Book Critics Circle awards last month, where he was given a lifetime achievement award. He has written a stack of books, and I got this particular one from the e-library because it was available. It is a modern Western. A Vietnam vet finds himself at loose ends and, by chance, in the minuscule Wyoming town of Slut's Hole -- so named by cowboys and never changed. The vet gradually finds a life, partly by conscious choice but mostly by falling into one unexpected set of circumstances after another. The writing is so skillful that every word of dialogue seems authentic and inevitable, even when it is outrageously improbable. This is a warmhearted book with sharp edges. I was impressed and want to read more.
Read
March 27, 2016A super quick read, this one is gritty and a bit lurid. I enjoyed reading it, and even had a hard time putting it down. I wouldn't put it in my PE top 10 list, though.
August 22, 2023
There's a lot to contemplate here. I'm going to need some time to digest this.
April 18, 2018
Walk Me to the Distance is Percival Everett’s second novel, published in 1985 and reissued in 2015 by the University of South Carolina Press. It is a simple story told in minimal prose with emotional restraint. David Larson returns from Vietnam. His parents have died while he was away, and his sister is an anti-war activist who calls him a baby killer. So he decides not to go home to Georgia but instead drives out west. His car breaks down in Slut’s Hole, Wyoming, a couple of hours in the middle of nowhere. While the car is being repaired he stays with Sixbury, a one-legged old woman living on a ranch with her developmentally disabled son, Patrick. He gets a job at the local highway rest stop and slowly falls into the life of the town. David is sure there’s nothing wrong with him but he is emotionally disconnected. He befriends Howard, the local veterinarian, who introduces him to a few women. The only love he is capable of is with prostitutes. Things don’t go well, but the town of Slut’s Hole is an accepting one. No one asks questions. Patrick runs off with Sixbury’s leg after a fight and they think he might have drowned. A Vietnamese family abandons a 7 year old girl at the rest stop and Sixbury and David take her in, naming her Butch. David becomes involved in a crime with a group of local men, and the police may be after them. It is hard to convey the emotional honesty and intensity of these events. In Everett’s hands though they make riveting reading. His prose is pitch perfect, austere, but able to evoke the great beauty of the west, and the rhythms of life and the speech of its people. And his story, of an emotionally paralyzed vet’s return to love and life, is funny, tragic and true.
January 10, 2025
I was fascinated to read this early work by Everett because, while it has strands of the writing I know from his more contemporary novels, it doesn’t yet feature what I consider to be hallmarks of his style: biting wit and a playfulness with tone and ideas, even when the subject is serious.
At the center of “Walk Me to the Distance� is the story of a chosen family that forms among three characters who are not trapped, but stranded, as David the protagonist clarifies. The writing is as spare as the Western landscape, as unadorned as the characters� emotional expression, and as brutal as their lives in the unfortunately named town of Slut’s Hole. (Fascinatingly, most of the characters in the novel are white, save for a Vietnamese girl whose entrance into the lives of a Vietnam vet and a one-legged rancher woman coalesces said family.)
Despite the economy of the language, the characters came alive and the emotional impact of the final chapters snuck up on me. While I’ve seen reviews that characterized the ending as hopeful, I closed this slim novel with a weight formed inside my chest. I likely won’t forget this book soon.
At the center of “Walk Me to the Distance� is the story of a chosen family that forms among three characters who are not trapped, but stranded, as David the protagonist clarifies. The writing is as spare as the Western landscape, as unadorned as the characters� emotional expression, and as brutal as their lives in the unfortunately named town of Slut’s Hole. (Fascinatingly, most of the characters in the novel are white, save for a Vietnamese girl whose entrance into the lives of a Vietnam vet and a one-legged rancher woman coalesces said family.)
Despite the economy of the language, the characters came alive and the emotional impact of the final chapters snuck up on me. While I’ve seen reviews that characterized the ending as hopeful, I closed this slim novel with a weight formed inside my chest. I likely won’t forget this book soon.
January 19, 2025
There are a lot of issues to encounter here, especially considering the length of the book.
A Vietnam vet (David) returns to the U.S. and settles in Wyoming, where he begins building a new life with an old (well, ok...older) woman (Sixbury) and her mentally retarded son. A young girl is abandoned into David's care and, together, he and Sixbury accept the responsibility of raising her.
After Sixbury's son and the young girl disappear and a search party is formed, there comes a moral dilemma when the search party discovers what has happened.
Along the way, there are instances of self-discovery and awareness, a certain degree of love for humanity and some really serious moral challenges, including a pretty graphic scene of bestiality.
Overall, the story was cohesive, which was a huge improvement over the author's previous novel. However, the ending was once again only hinted at and also seemed rather abrupt.
A Vietnam vet (David) returns to the U.S. and settles in Wyoming, where he begins building a new life with an old (well, ok...older) woman (Sixbury) and her mentally retarded son. A young girl is abandoned into David's care and, together, he and Sixbury accept the responsibility of raising her.
After Sixbury's son and the young girl disappear and a search party is formed, there comes a moral dilemma when the search party discovers what has happened.
Along the way, there are instances of self-discovery and awareness, a certain degree of love for humanity and some really serious moral challenges, including a pretty graphic scene of bestiality.
Overall, the story was cohesive, which was a huge improvement over the author's previous novel. However, the ending was once again only hinted at and also seemed rather abrupt.
March 28, 2025
When I was in @thecorshambookshop and saw a newly published Percival Everett, I had to buy it. And it's set in Wyoming, near Sundance and Gillette, where we were last year, in proper cowboy land, with beautiful and harsh landscapes, lives and stories. David has returned from the war - the Vietnam War, and he wants to be anywhere but where he's from...driving and ending up in Wyoming...where he makes a life with an old woman, the people of Sluts Hole and a little girl abandoned at a local rest stop. As always with his books, it is brilliantly written, from the first lone of the book you are drawn in, the characters are superb and the way of life described so well...hard and shocking and full of community when things go wrong...there is violence and western frontier justice, and ridiculous events, it is definitely the badlands...marvellous
#booksreadin2025 #bookrecommendations #bookreview #booksreviewersofinstagram #betweenthecovers #percivaleverett #picadorbooks @picadorbooks
#booksreadin2025 #bookrecommendations #bookreview #booksreviewersofinstagram #betweenthecovers #percivaleverett #picadorbooks @picadorbooks
August 12, 2024
This was amazing. Unique, unpredictable, a model specimen of American fiction…a classic of the post-Vietnam era you might say…and yet as of August 12th, 2024, 39 years after its first publication, there’s only 28 reviews on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ. 28!?
Well clearly I don’t understand what drives popularity in book sales, but I’m grateful to have stumbled upon this author. On to his next�
“‘You're a good man. I'll help you as much as I can.�
With that he walked away.�
“How far to the edge?"
"That's the horizon," Sixbury said.
"How far?"
"It's a very great distance."
"Can we go there?"
"What?"
"Can we walk to the distance?"
Sixbury smiled. "We can try, but, no, we can't get there."
"Why?"
"Well, the distance is always the same.�
Well clearly I don’t understand what drives popularity in book sales, but I’m grateful to have stumbled upon this author. On to his next�
“‘You're a good man. I'll help you as much as I can.�
With that he walked away.�
“How far to the edge?"
"That's the horizon," Sixbury said.
"How far?"
"It's a very great distance."
"Can we go there?"
"What?"
"Can we walk to the distance?"
Sixbury smiled. "We can try, but, no, we can't get there."
"Why?"
"Well, the distance is always the same.�
April 25, 2023
Cormac McCarthy-esque, but instead of feeling like a Western, Everett's dusty backdrop is quiet, uneasy post-Vietnam Americana. This far back in his career his writing economy is superb, even his voice and tone consistency still hadn't quite found their footing.
The book mostly has a quiet feel, but the major plot moments of the novel are brutal, giving the entire piece a violent undercurrent of unease.
It doesn't have the cohesion of his later novels, but the immediacy and commitment is all you need.
The book mostly has a quiet feel, but the major plot moments of the novel are brutal, giving the entire piece a violent undercurrent of unease.
It doesn't have the cohesion of his later novels, but the immediacy and commitment is all you need.
March 13, 2024
Very good, very sad book. It features many of Everett’s trademarks but feels unique among his early novels, mostly because it’s just a stronger story with better characterization. There’s a lot of humor to be found, as usual, but it shines most in its quieter moments, and gives us a lot to wonder about when it’s done.
I’m glad I’m currently in the process of moving so I don’t have another one of Everett’s books within reach. If I did I would probably start it immediately and spoil myself.
I’m glad I’m currently in the process of moving so I don’t have another one of Everett’s books within reach. If I did I would probably start it immediately and spoil myself.
September 10, 2024
I like Everett in the west. Watershed, Wounded and this so far. His books get friendship, community like few others. And that goodness in us, the possibility of it, when delineated by an artist, makes me happy to be alive: I look up from the book and see the world more clearly and it’s not all bad; some of us are trying to�. I don’t know.
Can’t be paraphrased, like most beautiful things.
Can’t be paraphrased, like most beautiful things.
June 22, 2024
My 5th Everret book and by far the most disturbing. Check the trigger warnings
It does make you ponder life's grey areas in a way only a talented author can. Main character is about 75% likeable
Not sure if I will read 'Telephone' or 'Trees' next, but need a few light-hearted books after reading this
It does make you ponder life's grey areas in a way only a talented author can. Main character is about 75% likeable
Not sure if I will read 'Telephone' or 'Trees' next, but need a few light-hearted books after reading this
July 23, 2024
A very strange and sad book. The MC is so emotionally disconnected that even though some pretty awful things happen (and are done by him), he is pretty numb to them (and thus you, the reader, are numb to them as well).
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Felt a bit like the (fantastic) movie Wind River mood/tone-wise (completely different plots/events).
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Felt a bit like the (fantastic) movie Wind River mood/tone-wise (completely different plots/events).
December 28, 2018
Strange novel, as I have come to expect from Everett. It did grip me, though.
Read
June 16, 2022Wonderful book
August 17, 2022
Not his best.
October 8, 2022
I read this moving book in two days. The main character, a Vietnam vet just out of the service, made many choices that
February 9, 2024
Roundaboutly about war and PTSD and finding a place in the world, whether or not it makes sense. An odd and disarming book but it did captivate me
March 20, 2024
this book was horrible, would rate 0 stars if i could.
June 6, 2024
Percival Everett! Love this guy. I think I'm gonna just spend the year reading his books. Read 'Assumption' before this one. 'James' is next up.
November 18, 2024
There are a lot of events packed into a short book; no doubt though, it is also compelling.
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