That Old Ace in the Hole
Bob Dollar is a young man from Denver trying to make good in a bad world. Out of college and aimless, Dollar takes a job with Global Pork Rind, scouting out big spreads of land that can be converted to hog farms. Soon he's holed up in a two-bit Texas town called Woolybucket, where he settles into LaVon Fronk's old bunkhouse for fifty dollars a month, helps out at Cy Frease's Old Dog Café, and learns the hard way how vigorously the old Texas ranch owners will hold on to their land, even when their children want no part of it.
Robust, often bawdy, strikingly original, That Old Ace in the Hole traces the waves of change that have shaped the American West over the past century -- and in Bob Dollar, Proulx has created one of the most irrepressible characters in contemporary fiction.
Choose a format:
Book details:
- Scribner |
- 384 pages |
- ISBN 9780743242486 |
- September 2003
Buy from another retailer:
Praise
Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1: Global Pork Rind
In late March Bob Dollar, a young, curly-headed man of twenty-five with the broad face of a cat, pale innocent eyes fringed with sooty lashes, drove east along Texas State Highway 15 in the panhandle, down from Denver the day before, over the Raton Pass and through the dead volcano country of northeast New Mexico to the Oklahoma pistol barrel, then a wrong turn north and wasted hours before he regained the way. It was a roaring spring morning with green in the sky, the air spiced with sand sagebrush and aromatic sumac. NPR faded from the radio in a string of announcements of corporate supporters, replaced...
Get our latest book recommendations, author news and sweepstakes right to your inbox
Resources
To download a file to your computer right-click on the link and choose 'save file as'
High Resolution Images
- Book Cover Image (jpg): That Old Ace in the Hole
Trade Paperback 9780743242486(2.9 MB)
- Author Photo (jpg): Annie Proulx
Gus Powell(4.5 MB)
Any use of an author photo must include its respective photo credit













