That Old Ace in the Hole

The new novel from Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx, author of THE SHIPPING NEWS. A richly textured story of one man's struggle to make good in the inhospitable ranch country of the Texas panhandle, told with razor wit and a masterly sense of place.


Some folks in the Texas panhandle do not like hog farms. But Bob Dollar, the newly-hired hog site scout for Global Pork Rind, intends to do his job. He is also determined not to turn out like his parents who left him on his Uncle Tam's doorstep as a child. And he is afflicted by the tendency to believe his own daydreams – to the point of forgetting that he made them up in the first place.


Bob ends up in Woolybucket, a town whose idiosyncratic inhabitants have ridden out all manner of booms and busts in panhandle country-cattle ranching, tornadoes, dust storms, gas and oil days, feedlot proliferation. These tough men and women seem to grow stronger with age, seasoned by the rigours of their life, from ancient Freda Beautyrooms who controls a ranch Bob covets, to Ace Crouch, the windmiller who defies the hog farms. They aren't the only obstacles in Bob's path. As he settles in at La Von Fronk's bunkhouse and lends a hand at Cy Frease's Old Dog Café, Bob is forced to question everything.


With characteristic gusto and razor wit, Annie Proulx serves up a rich mix of history, landscape and quixotic Texan life in this novel about chasing dreams in a corporate world.