The Passings

From the award-winning author of Mad Boy, a richly atmospheric historical Western about a notorious riverman seeking a new life amid the violence and dark promise of the American frontier 

In the summer of 1834, the sky over an Ohioan river town darkens—not with storm clouds, but with the thunderous wings of an immense flock of passenger pigeons. Their arrival, known as a passing, is an omen, and for the infamous Henry Phipps it means that a reckoning is near. 

A legendary riverman with a violent past and a name whispered along the banks of the Mississippi and Ohio, Henry Phipps is a man caught between myth and memory. A feared and admired figure by many, Henry is seeking to change his life and to shuck off his reputation—unearned, as he sees it. But with a fortune sewn into his saddlebags that is coveted by a gang of demonic children, a vengeful family on his trail, and a town in moral freefall, Henry finds himself at the center of a violent storm. 

As Henry searches for an exit strategy, he is drawn back into the lives of those who know him best, including Annette Barney, a sharp, independent woman who, with grit and grace, has made a life for herself in town.  

Set against a vividly drawn early American landscape on the cusp of great change, The Passings is a tale of fleeting fortunes, haunted pasts, and lives carved out along the nation’s most mythic waterways. Rich in atmosphere, funny, peopled by a large cast of indelible characters, Arvin’s novel is also a treatise on the price of legend—and the quiet, human truths that endure.