A Western family story at once intimate and epic, this rich, compelling, emotionally charged novel tells the story of the Sweringen family of Idaho: Emma, the matriarch, known as the Sheep Queen ("surely one of the most fascinating characters in current fiction" --Publishers Weekly); the daughter who disappoints her; the grandson who adores her; and the granddaughter, given up for adoption, who spends nearly half her life finding her way back to her family.

"The Sheep Queen is marvelous...Her reign has a mythic grandeur." --New York Times Book Review

"A fine novel...A sense of family as anchor and root and self-definition [gives] the book its considerable strength...Savage is a writer of the first order, and he possesses in abundance the novelist's highest art -- the ability to illuminate and move." --The New Yorker