The Long Night of Winchell Dear, Robert James Waller
The Long Night of Winchell Dear, Robert James Waller
List: $14.00 | Sale: $9.80
Club: $7.00

The Long Night of Winchell Dear

Author: Robert James Waller

Narrator: Richard McGonagle

Unabridged: 4 hr 1 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/14/2006


Synopsis

The steady tick of an aged Regulator wall clock and the squeak of an overhead fan turning slowly are soft but insistent, counting down the night, while the high desert thrums like a half-remembered Victrola song. The sounds are below the consciousness of Winchell Dear, an old-time gambler, a Texas poker player on the southern circuit, as he waits for something . . . something vague that his life of chance tells him is evil and moving his way.

In Diablo Canyon, a distant part of Winchell Dear’s ranch, Peter Long Grass squats by a campfire, contemplating the profile he saw moving along the ridge of Guapa Mountain an hour ago, thinking about the gambler’s housekeeper, Sonia Dominguez, about the small, quiet world he has fashioned far from civilization and what undefined presence might now be threatening it. He gathers his tools and begins to run across the desert floor.

And boring toward all of them is a cream-colored Lincoln Continental with two men aboard. Traveling from Los Angeles on a mission they’ve been given, they are professionals, cool and implacable at the start, but becoming steadily more confused by the strange landscape they are passing through. Forty minutes from their task, they ready themselves, while a kitchen wall clock ticks its way through the long night of Winchell Dear.

The Long Night of Winchell Dear finds master storyteller Robert James Waller at his best as he takes us into the shadowy world of high-stakes poker fought in the back rooms of Amarillo and Little Rock, and headlong toward the story’s stunning finale of chaotic terror, where an unexpected hero emerges.

About The Author

Robert James Waller is the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers The Bridges of Madison County and Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend. His other works include the New York Times bestsellers Old Songs in a New Café: Selected EssaysBorder Music, and Puerto Vallarta Squeeze, and his book of photographs, Images.Richard McGonagle is an experienced film, television, and voiceover actor. He’s recorded numerous audiobooks, including the New York Times Ten Best Book The Dark Side by Jane Mayer, Rocket Men by Craig Nelson, and American Lion by Jon Meacham.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Howard on May 27, 2022

4 Stars for The Long Night of Winchell Dear (audiobook) by Robert James Waller read by Richard McGonagle. This is a dark and gritty west Texas story where several lives are on a collision course one fateful night.......more

Goodreads review by Kendall on March 17, 2009

I suppose the world is divided into people who love Robert James Waller and those who don't. I'm of the latter persuasion. I thought this book was weakly plotted, a lot of digressions that didn't contribute to the story, and implausible plot twists.......more

Goodreads review by Rita on November 10, 2011

If you are a fan of Robert Waller’s Bridges of Madison County, you may be surprised at his latest novel. The setting is an isolated spot in the hard scrabble country of west Texas near the Mexican border. Winchell Dear, a professional gambler with a good many years under his belt, just happens to......more

Goodreads review by K on February 15, 2008

The steady tick of an aged Regulator wall clock and the squeak of an overhead fan turning slowly are soft but insistent, counting down the night, while the high desert thrums like a half-remembered Victrola song. The sounds are below the consciousness of Winchell Dear, an old-time gambler, a Texas p......more