New West Book Review
Lonely Hearts: Steven Wingate’s “Wifeshopping”
A winning debut story collection by a Colorado writer.
Wifeshopping
By Steven Wingate
Houghton Mifflin, 208 pages, $12.95
The men in Steven Wingate's engrossing, entertaining debut story collection Wifeshopping are looking not just for love, but for marriage. They're not adverse to commitment, but they are particular, seeking the ideal woman for whom to forsake their days of youthful flings. This ultimate woman never quite materializes for Wingate's protagonists, who reject their girlfriends and fiancées because they don't like used clothes or don't agree that they should get rid of a stranger's mementos found buried in the backyard. But more often, their women reject them for being too pompous, for proposing marriage too early or for trying to rush them out of their rituals of mourning for past loves. Wingate, who lives in Lafayette, Colo. and teaches at the University of Colorado, sets his stories across the country, from Denver to Thermopolis, Wyo., to Rockport, Mass., to Miami (and vividly evokes each of these varied settings), but the problems that plague his characters are the same everywhere—they're not-quite-perfect guys trying to create something lasting and meaningful with not-quite-perfect women.
Steven Wingate will discuss his book at the Tattered Cover (LoDo) on July 30 at 7:30 p.m., and at Poor Richard's Bookstore in Colorado Springs on August 7 at 5 p.m.
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New West Book Review & Interview
Carl Haywood’s Innovative Take on Explorer David Thompson
Canadian David Thompson is considered by some to be one of the shrewdest explorer-mapmakers to ever chart or trek a course. Following quickly on the heels of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, Thompson is widely credited as being the first person to set up a commercial trading post in Montana, a northwestern business venture called Saleesh House. Several opinions have always existed relating to the post’s precise location.
Shunning foregone historical conclusions, Carl Haywood, author of Sometimes Only Horses to Eat ($24.95, Stoneydale Press), has not only raised serious questions about Thompson’s travels in northwestern Montana, but he has offered new interpretations of his own that certainly command confutation.
Carl Haywood will discuss his book at David Thompson Days in Thompson Falls, Mont. on July 4-5, at the Libby Public Library in Libby, Mont. on July 14 (7 p.m.), at The Corner Bookstore in Sandpoint, Idaho on July 19 (1 p.m.), and information on his other regional appearances is available on his website.
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Western Book Roundup
Krakauer Delays Book, CutBank Takes on the World, and Bigfoot Field Guide is Announced
Best-selling Boulder author Jon Krakauer has withdrawn the manuscript for Hero, his book about Pat Tillman, according to Publishers Weekly (Via Slushpile.Net). Rachel Deahl writes that Doubleday had scheduled the book for an October release with a first printing of half a million copies.
Denise Hill at the always informative NewPages blog pointed out Ahmede Hussain's interview with Brian Kevin, Managing Editor of the University of Montana's CutBank. The interview ran in The Daily Star, which Hill says is "Bangladesh's largest circulating English-language newspaper." And according to Hussain, CutBank is "America's foremost literary magazine."
Also in the Roundup: Bigfoot spotted at the bookstore.
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Advertisement
New edition of Idaho travel guide
Idaho Off the Beaten Path
Idaho Off the Beaten Path by Boise author Julie Fanselow is part of a national guidebook series published by The Globe Pequot Press. Fanselow has written and updated the Idaho book since the first edition appeared in 1995.
The new edition’s Southwestern Idaho chapter features such additions as Boise’s Linen District, Nampa’s Belle District, Eagle Island State Park and a growing collection of murals in Mountain Home.
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New West Book Review
Short Stuff: Daniel Grandbois’ “Unlucky Lucky Days”
Unlucky Lucky Days
By Daniel Grandbois
BOA Editions
122, $14
On his website, Colorado fiction writer Daniel Grandbois describes his first book, Unlucky Lucky Days, as a "collection of nonsense and absurdist tales" so I guess I should have known better than to go seeking the real-life inspiration for one story, "Mansion," about a turtle who is "an executioner in retirement" and becomes stuck in a mansion he was trying to execute (if that make sense, you've got a more agile mind than I do). Grandbois writes that a librarian decided to take the mansion as a paperweight, and "that's where you can find the executioner right down to this day—in the fish tank near the children's books at the Boulder Public Library."
Daniel Grandbois will read from his book at the Tattered Cover (LoDo) at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 8. Munly and the Lepercalians will also perform.
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Western Nature Writers
An Interview with David M. Armstrong
David M. Armstrong is a Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado and the author of several books, including the recently published third edition of Rocky Mountain Mammals (University of Colorado Press, $19.95), a guide to the mammals of this region and those in Rocky Mountain National Park in particular. Packed with photos and facts, the book is worth its weight to lug on a backpacking trip. I recently interviewed Professor Armstrong via email about the best way to spot mammals in the wild, the projected fate of the pika, changes he's observed in Rocky Mountain National Park, the dearth of Bigfoot sightings there, and how we should "honor [our] cousin," the montane vole.
New West: Have you noticed any changes in Rocky Mountain National Park over the years?
David M. Armstrong: The fauna of any place is a dynamic phenomenon, a “work-in-progress,” and changes are sometimes subtle. Obvious changes in recent decades have been the substantial increase in the number of elk in the National Park and vicinity, ups and downs in numbers (hence visibility) of bighorn sheep and beaver, the increase in the number of black bears in recent years, the establishment of moose in the National Park (from introduced population in North Park).
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Western Book Roundup
Wroblewski Rolls with “Edgar Sawtelle”
It seems that just about everyone who got his or her hands on an advance copy of Colorado writer David Wroblewski's debut novel, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, predicted its success (myself included—let me pause here to pat myself on the back, because that's what everyone else is doing). According to the Wall Street Journal (via Publishers Lunch), the book "has gone into its seventh printing—a total of 90,000 copies—a week after its publication." Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg of WSJ credits this development to Amazon.com, who "chose the book as one of the best books of June and aggressively hyped it."
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is definitely the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed book by a Colorado writer since Kent Haruf's Plainsong became a finalist for the National Book Award and hit the national bestseller list after its 1999 release. And Wroblewski's book has only been out for two weeks, so who knows what else is in store for it?
Also in the Roundup: A former Boulder Book Store employee returns to read from her new novel.
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New West Book Review
On the Road with Boulder’s Queen of Shoes and Sloth
Queen of the Road
By Doreen Orion
Broadway Books, 293 pages, $13.95
Don't be fooled by the author photo in the back of Boulder author Doreen Orion's new travel narrative, Queen of the Road. It depicts her wearing sneakers and exercise clothes, smiling next to her dog at a scenic overlook to which they've presumably hiked. Although she looks like a standard REI-shopping, backpacking, Yoga Journal-reading, outdoor-worshiping Boulderite, she reveals her true nature early on in Queen of the Road, which details the year she and her husband Tim spent cruising America in a tricked-out luxury bus.
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New West Book Review
“Bronze Inside and Out” by Mary Strachan Scriver
Bronze Inside and Out: A Biographical Memoir of Bob Scriver
By Mary Strachan Scriver
368 pages, University of Calgary Press, $44.95
When Mary Strachan moved to Browning, Montana in August, 1961 to teach school, she didn’t imagine that one day she’d sleep with a cat, dog, gopher, badger, a few bobcats, a couple of foxes and an eccentric artist twice her age. But that’s exactly what happened when she met and married Bob Scriver who was residing and working as a bronze sculptor on the Montana Blackfeet Reservation.
“It was a mammal pile,” Mary Strachan Scriver said, happily describing the creature-lined bed where she and Bob Scriver cuddled up and slept the night away. “If Bob could have figured out how to get the eagle in the bed with us, I’m sure he would have done it.”
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