Wraiths of the Broken Land

S. Craig Zahler (born January 23, 1973, in Miami, Florida) is a multi-talented artist: a screenwriter, film director, composer, cinematographer, novelist, illustrator and heavy metal musician. After studying film at NYU, he built a career behind the camera and on the page. Zahler gained acclaim for hard‑bitten, violent dialogue‑driven films such as Bone Tomahawk (2015), Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017), and Dragged Across Concrete (2018), all of which he wrote, directed, and scored. Alongside his cinematic work, he’s penned several novels and graphic stories—his debut western, A Congregation of Jackals (2010), earned Spur and Peacemaker award nominations

2013’s Wraiths of the Broken Land stands as Zahler’s second western novel. It’s a relentless, genre-blending journey: half-pulp western and half-extreme horror. Beyond its popularity with readers, the novel drew Hollywood attention—20th Century Fox acquired film rights in 2016 for a film adaptation that has yet to happen.

It is 1902 and the book begins rather shockingly with an opium-addicted young woman named Yvette being held against her will as a forced prostitute in Mexico. The living conditions are grotesque, but resistance is futile due to her debilitating addiction. Soon thereafter, the reader meets her sister, Dolores, also an enslaved prostitute being held in a separate room by the same psycho Mexicans.

We then meet Nathaniel Stromler, age 26. He’s an erudite dandy of a gentleman in serious financial dire straits who has taken a job to ride along with the men of the Plugford family on a mission: recover the family daughters, Yvette and Dolores.

Nathanial is needed because he is bilingual and can pass for a gentleman john. He’s their ticket inside the kidnappers’ lair as a prospective client seeking to defile some captive white girls. The search for the sisters takes Nathanial and Team Plugford into the depths of Mexico from one promising lead to another in search of the brothel from Hell.

The scenes leading up to the rescue attempt are rather satisfying but the getaway’s immediate aftermath is less compelling. Pages upon pages of bickering among the Plugfords became tiresome as the novel’s secondary mystery of how the girls wound up as human sexual chattel is explored.

Things pick back up again with the backstory of the girls’ enslavement and a climactic confrontation between the opposing parties, but there was too much time on the road and scenes with characters waiting for something to happen.

To be clear, there’s plenty to enjoy about Wraiths of the Broken Land and Zahler is one of the great storytellers of our time. The problem is that this novel vastly pales in comparison to his other western, A Congregation of Jackals and his masterpiece crime novel, The Slanted Gutter. Those paperbacks spoiled me with their greatness while Wraiths was just good. If you’re trying to read them all (and I am), prioritize the other two first.

Get S. Craig Zahler books HERE.