Judy Troy Selected Works

A decent, ordinary life jeopardized by a catastrophically extraordinary event: this is the story, mythic in its outline and substance, that Judy Troy—author of two New York Times Notable Books and Whiting Award winner—tells in From the Black Hills.

In Wheatley, South Dakota, during the summer before Mike Newlin is to begin college, his father, an insurance salesman, shoots and kills the young woman who works for him as his receptionist. He disappears, and Mike is left behind in shock and grief. With his future suddenly obscured, Mike finds himself nearly overwhelmed by his present circumstances—not only the emotional damage inflicted by his father's awful crime but also his mother's dismay, the insinuating methods of a criminal investigator named Tom DeWitt, his girlfriend's anxieties, and his longing for an older woman who lives nearby—and the question of whether he will ever see his father again and what will happen if he does. As imposing as the landscape that forms its setting, From the Black Hills conveys with compassionate power the drama of a young man who must try to overcome his father's dark legacy.

Readers of The New Yorker know Judy Troy's characters well—they're small-town, blue-collar Americans, young and old, who look for romance at the Paradise Valley K-Mart, contemplate the universe in a trailer park, or go snake-shooting in the desert. Not much comes easily to them, even if life often holds surprises. Yet they endure, for the difficulties of just getting by in a world that sometimes seems beyond their control are offset by the healing power of love. Together for the first time in Mourning Doves, their struggles are all the more poignant, and their pleasures, enchanting. In these stories, set in the West, the Southwest, and the South, Judy Troy conjures the marvelous from the mundane, stirring the reader without ever resorting to sentimentality. This stunning debut will delight her fans and promises to win a greater following for a rare, young talent.

When the murdered body of a young woman is found in a river wash in Black Canyon City, Arizona, deputy sheriff Sam Rush launches an investigation that leads deeper and deeper into the mystery of her death and the psychological complexities of identity. Nate Aspenall, the young man with whom the murdered woman had been involved, is forced to confront the facts of her life, those of his own, and the future with her that he has lost. Travis Aspenall, Nate’s fourteen-year-old stepbrother, must come to grips with what love and sex do to people, the choices people make when threatened with loss, and what you’re left with when what you thought you knew and trusted has been thrown into doubt. As the investigation takes Sam north to Winslow and Holbrook, Arizona, and brings Nate temporarily back to Black Canyon City, solving the mystery becomes more complicated. Additional suspects emerge, and nobody is telling the truth. Sam finds that the victim’s haphazard life was dangerous, and her relationship with Nate anything but straight-forward. As for Nate, his time in Black Canyon City is running out, and his family is no longer certain of his innocence. In the midst of all this, Travis struggles to grow up.

Taking place in gorgeous Winslow, Arizona—a setting that becomes a fully realized character in this beautiful story—The Quiet Streets of Winslow offers a murder mystery interwoven with love stories and unforgettable voices, a masterful return for Judy Troy.

There are 4,000 friends, lovers, relatives, and neighbors in Venus, Kansas. Holly Parker lives just west of there. Holly Parker knows that people almost always make the wrong choices. Like her sixteen year-old-son who is dating his former sixth grade teacher. Like her friend, Marvelle, still mourning a husband she should have left long before he died and broke her heart. But while 36-year-old Holly can see what's best for other people, when it comes to her own life her vision is less than perfect. With the kind, decent veterinarian who lives next door interested in her, Holly would rather turn back to an ill-starred love affair with a married man—her boss at the restaurant where she works as a waitress. But there's also Gene Rollison, the quietly sexy state trooper who seems to turn up at all the wrong moments, leaving Holly flustered and confused. That's when a grieving friend, a few crazy summer nights, and a small Kansas town come together to help Holly see what she's been missing, and where she should go from here.

West Of Venus marks the arrival of a major new talent, a writer who treats her characters tenderly, capturing for us, with remarkable skill and grace, both their loneliness and their very human desire for connection.