Kathryn Wilder 
Desert Chrome 
Water, a Woman, and Wild Horses in the West

COLORADO BOOK AWARD WINNER
NAUTILUS BOOK AWARD WINNER
‘A raw and honest journey of addiction, love, trauma, and redemption—grounded in a deep love of place and all things mustang.’
—LAURA PRITCHETT, author of Stars Go Blue
Kathryn Wilder’s powerful story of grief, motherhood, and return to the desert entwines with the story of America’s mustangs as Wilder makes a home on the Colorado Plateau, her property bordering a mustang herd.
Desert Chrome illuminates these controversial creatures—their complex history in the Americas, their powerful presence on the landscape, and ways to help both horses and habitats stay wild in the arid West—and celebrates the animal nature in us all.




KATHRYN WILDER ‘s work, cited in
Best American Essays and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, has appeared in such publications as
High Desert Journal,
River Teeth,
Fourth Genre,
Sierra, and many anthologies and Hawai’i magazines. A past finalist for the Ellen Meloy Fund Desert Writers Award and the Waterston Desert Writing Prize, Wilder holds an MA from Northern Arizona University and an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts. She lives among mustangs in southwestern Colorado.

Circa l’autore

KATHRYN WILDER’s work, cited in
Best American Essays and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, has appeared in such publications as
High Desert Journal,
River Teeth,
Fourth Genre,
Sierra, and many anthologies and Hawai’i magazines. A past finalist for the Ellen Meloy Fund Desert Writers Award and the Waterston Desert Writing Prize, Wilder holds an MA from Northern Arizona University and an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts. She lives among mustangs in southwestern Colorado.