Filmgoers know of Daniel Woodrell from Winter’s Bone, his novel made into last year’s Academy Award-nominated film.  A few of us hardier souls know his work from long before, both the acclaimed  “country noir” novels set in and around the Ozarks and Woe to Live on, his splendid gothic Western published in 1987 (and filmed by director Ang Lee as Ride with the Devil).  Woodrell’s novel was one of several from the ‘70s and’80s, including Ron Hansen’s Desperadoes, and stories from Barry Hannah’s legendary Airships, that breathed new life into westerns and paved the way for modern-day works like Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier and Patrick DeWitt’s Booker Prize short-listed novel, The Sisters Brothers. In fact, a section from Woe to Live On is featured in this collection, under the same title, and it’s one of this short collection’s true stand-outs.