To Swallow the Earth

Ransom Wilcox and Karl Beckstrand’s Western novel To Swallow the Earth (2015) follows three characters: Patricia Laughlin, an untraditional damsel in distress, and two men vying for her affection, Wade Forster and Bridger Calhoun. Set in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the story begins as Wade returns to his ranch to find his life has been displaced, and he cannot figure out why. As Wade and Bridger fight for Patricia's attention, she finds herself torn between good and evil and the true story of her own missing family.

Wade Forster returns to his family ranch. He has been gone for several years and unable able to keep in touch because of the lack of technology during this era. When he left, his father and sister were running the ranch—upon his return, he discovers that his entire life has been turned upside-down. His father is missing, and his sister won't speak to him—not even to explain what happened or to offer a familiar shoulder to grieve the loss of his father. Wade is alone in the world, and he has no one to answer his many questions.

To make matters worse, someone is living in Wade's house. With his father gone, another man has taken over, and this man wants Wade dead. In fact, it seems as if everyone in town wants Wade dead. He doesn't know what he has done, or why this man has taken over his family legacy, but he wants answers, and he wants his life back.



A distraction comes to Wade in the form of Patricia Laughlin. Beautiful and hard-headed, the recent loss of her father makes Patricia particularly apprehensive of trusting anyone whom she doesn't know like family. Wade immediately falls in love with Patricia, who is sweet and looking for her family, after an incident with a nefarious man left her lost and confused about her own father's death. Relating to Patricia's feeling of loss, Wade wants to help her find her family.

Meanwhile, there is another man in town who wants Patricia. Bridger Calhoun, the local wealthy landowner, has his sights set on Patricia. He knows she is notorious for being hard-headed and slow to trust, but Bridger made his success on charm and manipulation. He is sure he knows just what to say to convince Patricia that he is the man to love. And once he does, Bridger knows that he will be able to get exactly what he wants—the same thing he wanted from her father, which brought Patricia to this settlement in the first place.

Wade struggles to gain Patricia's trust and affection as Bridger appears and charms Patricia into believing he wants to use his power to help her find her father. Wade can see right through Bridger, but
Bridger persuades Patricia that Wade has a bad reputation for a reason; he is trouble, and not worth her time. Wade wonders if it is worth risking his own life to help Patricia and save her from the manipulation of an evil man, but he has already lost so much. Though he loves her, he fears to put himself more at risk.



Ultimately, To Swallow the Earth evokes a classic Western landscape while imparting a lesson on love: not only how hard it is to find, but also how hard it can be to recognize, through our own pain and suffering.

Born in Alberta, Canada, Ransom Wilcox moved to California with his family when he was a boy. They had a farm in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. He fought in World War II, and after the war, he started a chiropractic practice in the Bay Area. An outdoorsman, he loved walking in the woods, as well as writing. He wrote three books in his lifetime, including a collection of short stories and poems, Horse and Dog Adventures in Early California.  A Laramie Award Nominee, To Swallow the Earth won an International Book Award for Fiction in the Western category in 2016.