Winner, Spur Award for Best Western Traditional Novel
Winner, Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize
Longlisted, Leacock Medal for Humour

Francis Blackstone is a fourteen-year-old gunslinger with a heart of gold.

Hes fallen for the governor’s daughter and resolves to make his mark, and his fortune, to win her favour. And what better way than to rob a Manhattan Company bank? Enter Bob Temple, the volatile outlaw who takes Francis under his wing though not without a degree of suspicion and so begins the adventures of the Blackstone Temple Gang as they crisscross the west in search of treasure, redemption, and the possibility of requited love.

After an encounter with a rival gang, Francis and Bob Temple are chased over the Sierras to California, where they enjoy unexpected fame as gentleman bandits. But their newfound celebrity brings hardships as well, and when their final job takes a startling turn, Francis is forced to discover what it means to make peace with a world that stands against him.

At once a tribute to boyhood enthusiasm and the heroes of classical quests, Like Rum-Drunk Angels is an offbeat, slightly magical, entirely original retelling of Aladdin as an American western.

Author

Tyler Enfield is a writer, photographer, and film director from Edmonton, AB. He is the author of Madder Carmine and three young adult novels, the winner of the High Plains Book Award and a finalist for the Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Award. His film Invisible World, produced by the NFB and co-written with Madeleine Thien, is the winner of three Alberta Screen awards, including best director.

Awards

Longlisted: Leacock Medal for Humour
Winner: Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize
Winner: WWA Spur Award for Best Western Traditional Novel

Reviews

“Like Rum-Drunk Angels wrings a variation on the American Western which is entirely unique saucy, funny, warm, tender, unbridled. Its a breakneck gallop of a book, as fine a novel as I have read in a long time.” Wayne Johnston, author of First Snow, Last Light

“Tyler Enfield opens a treasure chest of familiar Western tropes, turns them upside down and inside out, and makes them dance. Funny, absurd, wildly inventive, and then just as youre least prepared for it deeply moving. Magic.” Ian Weir, author of The Death and Life of Strother Purcell

“Employing traits from the playbooks of both the Coen Brothers and Walt Disney, this Western stars 14-year-old gunslinger Francis Blackstone on a journey to make his fortune and win a young ladys heart. A buddy-novel with bandits, bank robbing and adventure a-plenty.” The Globe and Mail

“More complex than a simple western outlaw gang horse opera. … There is plenty of humour and the whole year-long escapade takes on a dream-like aspect as in the anything-can-happen, even the impossible which does.” The Miramichi Reader

“Like Rum-Drunk Angels turns the historically mundane into the psychedelically evocative, and the far less mundane into something even more grandiose.” Town Crier

“A fabulist feast. … Cormac McCarthy meets Gabriel Garcia Marquez.” Winnipeg Free Press

“Beautifully cinematic, with surprising story breaks that create a long-lasting controlled suspense.” Hamilton Review of Books

“A surreal, often hilarious fracturing of traditional western tropes, imbuing classic elements with a spirited post-modern awareness. … Like Rum-Drunk Angels is a hoot, with a tender heart at its core.” Quill & Quire

“A truly mesmerizing work.” Edify Magazine

“Add Enfields landscape portraiture to his dry, unskippable dialogue, and youve got the bones of a Western. … As the dynamite runs low, the story becomes a more solemn affair through the last quarter. … This transition, from fun to serious, is done with such subtlety that it wasnt until I finished that I realized how well Enfield had pulled off that shift in tone.” Atlantic Books Today

“With a yarn like this, you dont always know what youre hearing, where its coming from, and certainly not what it means, but theres little youd rather do than sit on your horse and listen for a while.” Literary Review of Canada

“A magical, fun novel about Francis Blackstone setting out to seek his fortune. It has all the elements of a good western, but Enfield also gives a nod to Arabian Nights, William Goldmans Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and William Faulkners As I Lay Dying.” Prairie Books Now

“A wildly funny, wildly entertaining western. It made me laugh. It made me cry. Buy it for the person that you bought Patrick DeWitts The Sisters Brothers nine years ago.” CBC Day 6 Book Guide

“Its a smart and funny reimagining of a beloved-and-timeworn-but-still-bucking genre.” Temz Review

Details

8 pages
Pub date: February 13, 2024