Dark family secrets follow Coe as he drops out of college and attempts to start a new life with fellow outlaws in the mountains of Wyoming. 

“Fleeing a mental illness diagnosis pushed by his family, Coe drops out of college and hits the road, ending up in Wyoming, where he falls in with a group living illegally on the mountain above a resort town. Here he works muscle jobs, climbs mountains, befriends a pair of brothers new to the sport, and slips under the spell of Benny, a Vietnam war vet who sleeps beneath a rocky overhang, ascends cliffs like a mountain goat, and seems to know things he shouldn't about Coe's French grandfather. At Benny's command, the group climbs routes well beyond the brothers' abilities and kicks off a dangerous vandalism war against the resort corporation. An old cook warns Coe away from Benny, suggesting the secret to his identity is encoded in a bible passage. Meanwhile, from letters sent by his great aunt, Coe receives contradictory accounts of his grandfather's past. As those close to Coe meet tragic ends, he is forced to confront the frightful notion that this Wyoming violence may connect to a crime committed a half century before. Is the old cook right about Benny and the biblical mystery? Is Coe slipping into mental illness? High on the mountain, alone with Benny, Coe must cast his lot.

“Paul Cohen hit the ground running at full speed with his terrific debut, The Glamshack, and his new novel, Hard Side of the Mountain, is just as exciting. Combining gorgeous, razor-sharp sentences and striking imagery with a gripping intergenerational mystery and mythic resonance, Hard Side of the Mountain is a story set in the near past that speaks loudly to our current moment.”

“Written in a lyric and original prose style with ecstatic descriptions of Wyoming’s landscape, Hard Side of the Mountain is the story of Coe, an unmoored drifter of the American West. Camping alone and working seasonal jobs, he struggles with a family secret that has passed down pain and consequences through the generations. An obsession with rock climbing mirrors Coe’s inner effort to find balance between courage and despair, grief and joy. The natural world is his only salvation as he navigates the most difficult climb of all—learning who he is.”

“Dazed and dazzling, mystical and masculine, Hard Side of the Mountain features a renegade group of climbers who plummet into destabilizing violence. In this smart and startling novel, Paul Cohen boldly explores unexpected truths that shy from the light, but cannot escape it.”

“Fleeing the ghosts of his family's secrets, Coe seeks to create a new life off-grid in the American West. There among the cathedral-like mountains, he creates a new family of drifters and dreamers. But as the days and seasons tick by, he finds his past threatening to catch up to him. Hard Side of the Mountain is a gripping tale, told in crystalline prose, about how we choose to trade one myth for another, only to find out they may be the same story.”

“This incredible novel—vast, brilliant, original—is the true heir to Cormac McCarthy. The reader might be tempted to read as slowly as possible in order to absorb these intelligent, mystical waves of language, the very precious vocabulary of the present moment. But the story's requirements are to read faster and faster as the novel races through its teeming, dangerous and gorgeous world, the psychological chasms opening and closing relentlessly. A testament to how life feels and a reminder that the novel is not done with its great work yet.”