The novel is told in twelve linked stories, each of which is a chapter told in turn by the members of a counter-culture family in the process of destroying itself. The novel takes place over twenty years, from the '70's to the 90's, from the beginnings of familial disintegration to its individual members coming to terms. This novel won the 1998 King County (Washington) Arts Commission Publication Award for Fiction.
Matt Briggs grew up in the Snoqualmie Valley, raised by working-class, counter-culture parents who cultivated and sold cannabis. Briggs has written two books set in rural Washington chronicling this life, The Remains of River Names and Shoot the Buffalo. Critic Ann Powers wrote of Briggs first book in the New York Times Book Review, "Briggs has captured the America that neither progressives nor family-value advocates want to think about, where bohemianism has degenerated into dangerous dropping out." Briggs has published a number of collection of stories, including The Moss Gatherers and The End is the Beginning. Of his stories, Jim Feast wrote in the American Book Review, "All of Briggs's zigzagging stories are told with great attention to the details of lowbrow culture and the contours of the American Northwest.
Briggs has won a number of prizes. His novel, Shoot the Buffalo, was award an American Book Award by the Before Columbus Foundation in 2006. He has also won The King County Arts Commission Publication Prizer, the Nelson Bentley Prize in Fiction, and the Hugo Gift Award from Richard Hugo House. The Stranger awarded Briggs the first Stranger Genius Award in Literature in 2003.
