The Sisters Brothers

The Sisters Brothers is Patrick deWitt's 2011 novel following Eli and Charlie Sisters, two notorious hired assassins working for a mysterious employer known as the Commodore. Ordered to travel from Oregon City to California during the Gold Rush to kill a prospector named Hermann Kermit Warm — who may have stolen from their boss — the brothers make their way through a string of picaresque misadventures, encountering a prized but ill-fated horse, con men, and a fortune-hunting scheme built on Warm's secret gold-detecting formula.

Narrated by the introspective Eli, the novel plays its brutal violence for both dark comedy and quiet pathos, as Eli grows increasingly weary of the killing and the domineering brother he has always followed. The story builds toward the brothers turning away from the only life they've known.

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and winner of Canada's Governor General's Literary Award and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, The Sisters Brothers was adapted into a 2018 film starring John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix.