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Unicorn Mountain

Michael Bishop

First published June 1988
Type Novel

<b>From the flaps of the Arbor House first edition:</b> "<i>Unicorn Mountain</i> is the story of four people whose lives are transformed by a band of unicorns. Each one of them is enmeshed in the grinding anxieties of daily life. Libby Quarrels is a divorced rancher in the Colorado mountains, just getting by, and unsure about how to react to the fact that she sometimes sees unicorns up in the high valley; Bo Gavin is an Atlanta adman who is gay and has AIDS, who has no one to turn to until Libby takes him in; Sam Coldpony, a Ute Indian and Libby's ranch hand, is estranged from his wife and daughter and has an uncomfortable feeling that he deserves supernatural punishment; Paisley Coldpony, Sam's daughter, is literally haunted by her mother, a recent suicide, and feels the call to become the true shaman of her tribe - a big burden for a teenager in a small-town high school. And then there are the unicorns. <p>Sam and Libby have seen them, but sometimes they just aren't there. And while Libby is off fetching Bo in Atlanta, Sam sees one die - and vanish. But Bo begins to receive television channels from another world, and sees a show, hosted by Marlin Perkins, on a deadly equine disease among the unicorns. And it becomes evident that someone has to do something here, in this world, to save the unicorns, before everything becomes so direly messed up that the situation is totally out of control: because Bo is dying, a vengeful ghost is after Sam, Paisley is looking for the father who abandoned her, and Libby, holding everything together by hard work and will power, is definitely losing her grip. <p>But this is a book in which magic works, in such a way as to change everything for the better. And in the end <i>Unicorn Mountain</i> is about salvation even when the odds are against you."

YearAwardCategoryStatus
1988 Lambda Literary Awards Gay Men's Mystery/Science Fiction Nominee/Finalist
1989 Locus Poll Award Best Fantasy Novel Nominee/Finalist
1989 Mythopoeic Award Mythopoeic Fantasy Award Winner

Date Publication Publisher Type Page
June 1988 Cover Unicorn Mountain Arbor House / William Morrow Novel 1
November 1988 Cover Unicorn Mountain Arbor House / William Morrow / SFBC Novel 1
July 1989 Cover Unicorn Mountain Bantam Spectra Novel 1
August 1989 Cover Unicorn Mountain Grafton Novel 1
August 1989 Cover Unicorn Mountain Grafton Novel 1
August 1990 Cover Unicorn Mountain Grafton Novel 11
April 1991 Cover Die Einhorn-Berge Heyne Novel
July 2000 Cover Unicorn Mountain ElectricStory.com Novel
July 2000 Cover Unicorn Mountain ElectricStory.com Novel
July 2000 Cover Unicorn Mountain ElectricStory.com Novel
July 2020 Cover Unicorn Mountain: A Novel of an Alternative 1985 in the History of the United States Kudzu Planet Productions Novel 21
July 2020 Cover Unicorn Mountain: A Novel of an Alternative 1985 in the History of the United States Kudzu Planet Productions Novel |21