The Brittle Star

A Foyles best book of 2017

'Langdale is excellent . . . The Brittle Star is a great beginning to what I hope is a long and productive career' Guardian


Perfect for fans of Cormac McCarthy and True Grit, The Brittle Star is the epic story of a young man's unquenchable spirit.

When his mother's ranch is attacked, sixteen-year-old John Evert is wounded and left to die. But John Evert is no ordinary young man. He's a frontiersman's son, a rancher who's lived his whole life in the untamed Southern California wilderness of 1860.

In a journey that will take him from the bustling young city of Los Angeles to Texas to Missouri and back, to the front lines of the American Civil War and home again, John Evert will learn the cost of vengeance and the price of forgiveness.


'Pacy, thrilling, well-plotted . . . an extraordinary debut novel' Andrew Roberts, author of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900