The Heart in Winter

Barry’s (Night Boat to Tangier) gravelly audiobook narration amplifies his gritty Western set in 1891 Butte, MT, during the copper-mining heyday. Tom Rourke, an Irishman with a morphine and alcohol habit, encounters Polly Gillespie, an Irish mail-order bride from Chicago, on the day she is posing for her marriage portrait with her new husband, a mining captain. Unable to clear Polly from his thoughts, Tom delivers her wedding photos to her home and continues to find reasons to return after that. While Polly’s husband works, Polly and Tom share stolen moments together, and love blooms—along with a plan to run. After stealing money and a horse, the ill-fated lovers flee Butte for San Francisco to begin their life anew. Along their westward trek, they fight vicious cold and snow and encounter unique characters such as a fiddle-playing, mushroom-ingesting Métis couple and a garrulous English reverend who’s overly fond of tequila. Unbeknownst to them, however, Polly’s woebegone husband hires a band of outlaws to hunt down the lovers and return his wife to Butte.