A very peculiar but readable surreal and odd novel about killers versus evil chemical byproducts playing games with reality in an old house in Eastern Oregon at the start of the 20th century. If the tone seems lackadaisical, the prose is crisp and there are all sorts of things that tell you this is from the seventies, with its amoral but manly characters of violent action and literally interchangeable women who sleep around a lot, and the whole plot seems vaguely alchemy in the wild west. There are some lovely flourishes in the writing, and the whole thing is a bit of a curate's egg of a book.