The Kettle: A Novel

A gripping Western about two brothers on a westward journey of revenge, cutting a scorched path across the winter frontier—until the graves they're digging begin to look like their own

Arriving back on their Ohio farm after a trip, brothers Walter and Jed find their homestead torched and ruined, their Ma and Pa and sister Sweet Mary burnt to a crisp. Their tremendous grief immediately turns to violence: they scoop up the ashy remains of their family in one of the only objects left on the farm, a tin kettle. Attaching the kettle to their horses, they head west to pick up the path of Spring Frog and Frank Booth, the leaders of a gang they know to be the cause of their family’s great ruin.

What follows is an odyssey of the body and the soul. The violent path they carve across the west will leave no one untouched, no bridge not burned. Alongside the beauty of the landscape in winter is the relentless grim reaper of their revenge. Each new location brings them new opportunities to amend their ways, to seek a path different from the vengeful road they are on, and, each time the brothers turn away, to play out their vicious hand. 

Elwood Reid’s first novel in over a decade is a bold and beautiful tale of the old west and family secrets, a dazzling document of violence and history and human nature.