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The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt *** (of 4)

A tall tale of the Old West.  A pair of brothers, Charlie and Eli Sisters, with the self-importance of Keillor’s Dusty and Lefty and the banter of Tom and Ray (Car Talk) work as hired guns.  Traveling on a pair of “found” horses, Tub and Nimble, from Oregon to the 1851 Gold Rush town of San Francisco they encounter a crying man and a lone Indian.  They shoot people that bother them, ponder the nature of love, cope with crippled horses, endure back-country dentists, drink to excess, and sleep in the woods even when they are coping with painful hangovers.  These are the kind of guys that use extra large words unnecessarily and refuse to engage in the use of verbal contractions.  One of them misses his mother.  I listen to many recorded books and I found John Pruden’s reading of The Sisters Brothers to perfectly capture the personalities, era, and farce of this story.