The Westward Hours

Long after climate change has wiped out millions and reshaped the world, the US has ended in civil war and rule by corporations. A privileged class of oligarchs and their private security units live under climate-controlled domes, while the dispossessed majority struggles to survive.

In the wastelands of Sacrifice – once the American Southwest – a charismatic brother and sister known in whispers as 'The Twins' gather an army of the desperate and launch a brief, terrifying insurgency. Decades later, the Reunited States rises again – colder, harder, more religious and more exclusionary than ever.

But the blazing legacy of the Twins, half-history, half-legend, lingers in surprising ways…

Equal parts futuristic western and literary epic, Dennison Smith’s novel confronts what is lost – and what may yet be born.

Praise for The Westward Hours

‘Compellingly brings together the oddity of American Gothic with a futuristic post-mortem on capitalism’ – Amit Chaudhuri

‘A scorchingly intense, ecologically resonant vision of our near-term future by a writer possessed of uncanny storytelling gifts’ – David Abram

Praise for The Eye of the Day

‘A remarkable coming-of-age story, told in a stunning voice that beguiles and enchants on every page’ – Ruth Ozeki

‘Exceptionally bold, beautiful, original and humane’ – Joanna Kavenna

‘A dramatic story told with intelligence and feeling’ – Nancy Richler

Dennison Smith’s The Eye of the Day is an intimate, assured portrait of the complex, messy lives of a pair of unlikely friends’ – Cathy Marie Buchanan

‘A riveting narrative of survival, self-knowledge and the possibility of second chances’ – Quill & Quire