A poet's public reading shines a spotlight on her isolation. Robbers look to their former teacher for a chance at redemption. A painter of railroads stubbornly documents decline and abandonment. A Halloween festival is rooted in matters of life and death. Set in a fictional Pacific Northwest town, told through the gossip and grievances of its residents, Spearwood, OR examines the impacts of place, inherited narratives, and generational traumas on a community in seventy-two very short stories. John Carr Walker's vision of the new American west is funny and furious, desperate and demure, familiar on the surface, yet deeply strange.