copyright 1999; "Watercolors by William Matthews"; Scribner publishers, New York; hardbound; very good condition with unmarked pages; dust jacket very good.
 
Description -
Close Range: Wyoming Stories is a 1999 collection of short stories written by E. Annie Proulx, beginning in 1997. The stories are set in the desolate landscape of rural Wyoming and detail the often grim lives of the protagonists.  The collection was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.  
 
Brokeback Mountain, the last short story, was made into a 2005 American romantic drama film directed by Ang Lee and produced by Diana Ossana and James Schamus. Adapted from the 1997 short story of the same name by Annie Proulx, the screenplay was written by Ossana and Larry McMurtry. The film stars Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway, and Michelle Williams and depicts the complex emotional and sexual relationship between Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist in the American West from 1963 to 1983.
 
The volume includes 11 short stories:
"The Half-Skinned Steer"
"The Mud Below"
"Job History"
"The Blood Bay"
"People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water"
"The Bunchgrass Edge of the World"
"Pair a Spurs"
"A Lonely Coast"
"The Governors of Wyoming"
"55 Miles to the Gas Pump", a brief vignette about a rancher's wife who discovers the corpses of missing women in the attic
"Brokeback Mountain"