Before the Gold Rush transformed the Sierra Nevada, the region supported thriving Indigenous communities and ecosystems. In his new novel, "What Came West," author Josh Weil explores the environmental and cultural destruction that followed through the eyes of a solitary trapper.
Weil said the story grew from his attachment to the landscape.
“Strangely enough, I wrote it really as a love letter to the land itself,” Weil said.
After moving to the Sierra Nevada more than a dozen years ago, Weil became fascinated by how quickly the Gold Rush changed the region.
The novel follows Silas Hall, a neurodivergent trapper and artist who seeks solitude in the mountains because crowds cause him severe distress. Silas feels more at ease among animals and in nature, making the destruction caused by arriving miners especially painful.
“I knew it had to be someone who would experience the loss of the natural world in a way that was more intense than most of us would,” Weil said.
The story unfolds along two timelines. One follows an intense, three-week manhunt through the Yuba River Canyon. The other takes the form of a confessional letter from Silas to the young son he abandoned.
The letter appears on the backs of more than 20 traditional dip-pen drawings of Sierra Nevada plants and animals.
“So, he’s in a way kind of trying to give his son some sense of the world that he inhabits,” Weil said.
To depict Nisenan history, Weil consulted closely with Shelly Covert, tribal spokesperson for the Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Tribe, and worked with Nisenan language specialists. Weil said he chose to tell the story through a non-Indigenous protagonist because he did not believe he had the right or ability to write from a Nisenan perspective.
Weil wrote "What Came West" over five to six years, much of it inside a vintage 1959 Dalton trailer parked beside Deer Creek. The finished novel pairs a high-stakes pursuit with a meditation on solitude, environmental destruction and the stories Americans tell about the West.
Event
- Josh Weil will discuss What Came West from 7 to 8 p.m. Sept. 23 at Bloomsbury Books, 290 E. Main St. in Ashland.
Guest
- Josh Weil, author
