The Flight of Michael McBride

I wrote The Flight of Michael McBride (1995) after finishing the Oran trilogy, wanting desperately to write a straight-forward, single book instead of a long and complicated series. I also wanted to write something that made use of uniquely American folklore traditions -- indigenous as well as the rich co-mingling of fantastic traditions from immigrants. I was intrigued by the way European fairy tales placed the fantastic in a close, parallel world -- a neighborhood within a neighborhood. The fey occupied territory in the corner of your garden, hustled cows in your barns, lived in your pond. But in the Southwest of the United States, the horizon stretched huge, wide, and mostly unknown. The fantastic hovered like a mirage on the edge of a broad landscape. How else to cross it except in one of the cherished traditions of the old west, the cattle ride? (I highly recommend reading B. Traven's brilliant short story by the same name in The Night Visitor and Other Stories. It inspired me to consider the possibilities of the cattle ride as a mythic journey.)