A gender-bending story of friendship, love, and redemption set in the Wild West during the gold rush.
"Starred Review. Volmer's prose is taut and restrained, moving the story along at a healthy clip as her hardscrabble characters rumble and stumble through their dusty domain. Volmer's found a fat vein of gold in some heavily mined territory." - Publishers Weekly
"Even though the main characters are female, and the story is told mostly from their point of view, Volmer's colorful debut is in many ways a typical Western, heavy on action and subplots involving miners, unions, and strikes that will appeal more to male than female readers." - Library Journal
This information about Crown of Dust was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Mary Volmer was born in Grass Valley, California and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received a BA from Saint Mary's College, California, before completing a Masters degree at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth as a Rotary Scholar. She is currently the Agnes Butler Scholar at Saint Mary's College where she is pursuing a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and lecturing in English/Composition. This is her first novel.

If you liked Crown of Dust, try these:
by Lori Ostlund
Published 2025
Nine exquisite stories that explore class, desire, identity, and the specter of violence that looms daily over women and the LGBTQ+ community.
by Anna North
Published 2022
The Crucible meets True Grit in this riveting adventure story of a fugitive girl, a mysterious gang of robbers, and their dangerous mission to transform the Wild West.
by Natalie Haynes
Published 2021
Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, a gorgeous retelling of the Trojan War from the perspectives of the many women involved in its causes and consequences - for fans of Madeline Miller.
It is among the commonplaces of education that we often first cut off the living root and then try to replace its ...
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.