It's always gratifying to read a debut novel and feel hopeful for the author's future works. "The Fallen Land" by Taylor Brown is a gritty, bone-chilling saga about a young couple struggling to survive against impossible odds during the wretched, sad last days of the Civil War. Callum and Ava are homeless and on the run from a merciless one-armed bounty hunter. It is, in part, a tender love story, but one that is built on gristle, bone, heartless cold, and bitter revenge. Brown weaves his descriptive prose in a way that keeps the story moving at the steady pace of a war-deployed thoroughbred. The result is writing that fairly crunches like frozen scrub underfoot. The scenes of carnage and cruelty are stark and gory, awash in evil but devoid of the cartoon violence that is often featured in books and movies today. "Fallen Land" has been compared to "Cold Mountain" and the works of Cormac McCarthy. I would throw in a dash of "True Grit" for good measure to describe an exciting debut that promises great things to come.