Welcome to Hard Times cover art

Welcome to Hard Times

A Novel

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Welcome to Hard Times

By: E. L. Doctorow
Narrated by: John Rubinstein
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About this listen

Here is E. L. Doctorow’s debut novel, a searing allegory of frontier life that sets the stage for his subsequent classics.

Hard Times is the name of a town in the barren hills of the Dakota Territory. To this town there comes one day one of the reckless sociopaths who wander the West to kill and rape and pillage. By the time he is through and has ridden off, Hard Times is a smoking ruin. The de facto mayor, Blue, takes in two survivors of the carnage - a boy, Jimmy, and a prostitute, Molly, who has suffered unspeakably - and makes them his provisional family. Blue begins to rebuild Hard Times, welcoming new settlers, while Molly waits with vengeance in her heart for the return of the outlaw.

Here is E. L. Doctorow's debut novel, a searing allegory of frontier life that sets the stage for his subsequent classics.

Praise for Welcome to Hard Times:

“Terse and powerful.” (Newsweek)

“A taut, bloodthirsty read.” (The Times Literary Supplement)

“A superb piece of fiction.” (The New Republic)

©1975 E. L. Doctorow (P)2014 Random House Audio Action & Adventure Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Classics Heartfelt

Critic reviews

"A forceful, credible story of cowardice and evil." (The Washington Post)

"We are caught up with these people as real human beings." (Chicago Sun-Times)

"Dramatic and exciting." (The New York Times)
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This was an author recommended by a friend. It isn't the sort of book that I would normally listen to. I almost gave up at the beginning because of the violence, but I persevered and was drawn in by the story and the reading.

It is a tale that will stay with me and I will select other titles by this author and recommend the audio to my friends.

A moral story

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This is a hard-bitten, frequently violent Western - an early work by Doctorow, who later became better known for non-genre novels such as Ragtime. The opening is gripping. A mysterious outlaw causes carnage in a remote settlement - which then has to rebuild itself. As a listening experience, it’s complicated … There are too many characters. I found myself wondering what was going on at times - though I generally knew the broad outline of the story at any given moment. There was enough activity - and the narration was sufficiently good - to keep me plugging on. And there are some terrific lines and passages. But the opening sections were the best in the novel - and the rest of it never quite lived up to them. Overall, it would’ve been better to read this in hard copy, despite the quality of the narration. I suspect it would have been easier to make sense of it.

‘The only thing that grows here is trouble’

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