ABQ / Santa Fe News

Part 1: Colorado, Idaho, Montana and New Mexico

Best Western Books of 2008

By Jenny Shank, 12-01-08

It’s time for my second annual Best Western Book list, and as I did last year, I’m going to focus on books set in this region (with a few exceptions for excellent books written by writers from this region but set elsewhere), naming my favorites from each state.  I managed to read 53 books this year, and these are the books from our region that most impressed me.  Please add your favorites in the comments section. Today I’ll discuss Colorado, Idaho, and Montana, and New Mexico and tomorrow it’s on to Oregon, Utah, Wyoming, and other Western states.

Colorado

The biggest book story this year in Colorado, and heck, just about the whole country, is the phenomenal run of David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (Ecco, 562 pages, $25.95).  Wroblewski, who lives in Westminster, Colo. discussed how he made the transition from software engineer to novelist in my interview with him this summer.  Buoyed by extremely positive word of mouth among independent booksellers, book buyers, and other book industry people, as well as glowing blurbs from Richard Russo and Stephen King, Sawtelle hit the New York Times bestseller list on June 29 and has remained there since, getting an additional boost from Oprah, who selected it for her Book Club in September.  (Check out Oprah.com for a chance to ask Wroblewski a question or discuss the book with other readers.)

Sawtelle, set in Wroblewski’s native Wisconsin, is the engrossing story of a mute boy named Edgar who grows up with his mother and father in a rural area where they run a unique dog breeding and training program, designed to select animals with the best qualities.  The plot thickens when Edgar’s wayward uncle returns, disrupting the harmony of their lives.  (I reviewed the novel for the Rocky Mountain News here.)

Apart from Wroblewski’s success, there have been a number of great books set in Colorado published this year.  Kent Haruf and Peter Brown’s West of Last Chance (W.W. Norton & Company, 212 pages, $49.95) is a striking collaboration mingling Brown’s, beautiful, evocative photographs with Haruf’s brief, incisive writings depicting life on the high plains. They capture the land’s sweep and sky and its unique people, buildings, and signs in a way that is affectionate yet frank about the difficulty of life in the region.  The book includes photos from Colorado, Montana, South Dakota, Texas, and other states in the Great Plains.  (Check out my interview with Brown and Haruf here.)

Next I want to mention a couple of great short story collections by Colorado writers. Colorado’s Fulcrum Books published Migration Patterns (Fulcrum Publishing, 268 pages, $14.95) by Gary Schanbacher late last year, but I didn’t get a chance to read it until this year.  Plenty of other people read and enjoyed the book as well, as it has racked up accolades this year, winning the 2008 Colorado Book Award in Fiction, tying for Bronze in the Short Story Fiction Category of the Independent Publisher Book Awards, making the short list for the High Plains Book Award and receiving an honorable mention for the 2008 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award.  Filled with characters who tend to flee when the going gets rough, Migration Patterns is the welcome and promising debut of a Colorado fiction writer with a keen sense for psychological detail and an appreciation for the influence natural landscapes can have on people’s behavior.

I also loved Steven Wingate’s Wifeshopping (Houghton Mifflin, 208 pages, $12.95), a debut collection of witty, insightful stories centered on men’s quest for love and marriage. The book won the Bakeless Prize for fiction sponsored by the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, which included the prize of the collection’s publication by Houghton Mifflin.  Earlier this year, I interviewed Wingate, who teaches composition and creative writing at the University of Colorado.

For those looking for a novel set in the Centennial State this year, I’d suggest Tara Yellen’s After Hours at the Almost Home (Unbridled Books, 256 pages, $14.95), which follows the fortunes of the waiters, waitresses, and bartenders at a Denver bar during the hectic night of the Broncos’ 1999 Super Bowl win, when a seasoned waitress doesn’t show up for her shift, and Ron McLarty’s Art in America (Viking Penguin, 366 pages, $25.95), in which a down-on-his-luck New York playwright is invited to spend the summer in Creedemore, Colorado (a fictional town in the San Luis Valley that resembles Creede), where he will write and produce a play about the history of the town.  Having no other prospects, the playwright packs up and heads West, where he encounters a dizzying cast of characters and takes a shot at true love and artistic fulfillment.

Idaho

I have two excellent books to recommend that are set in Idaho this year. First, Brandon R. Schrand’s vivid The Enders Hotel (University of Nebraska Press, 230 pages, $17.95) chronicles his childhood growing up in the Enders Hotel in Soda Springs, Idaho, where he had a front-row seat to a revolving show of humanity that included drunks, homeless people, ex-cons, murderers, and all manner of other colorful drifters who came to stay in the hotel, drink in its bar, and eat in its café. Schrand proves himself a top-notch yarn spinner with this richly described, poignant memoir.

And Moscow-based writer Kim Barnes returned with her second novel this fall, A Country Called Home (Alfred A. Knopf, 271 pages, $23.95), in which she tells the story of the fallout that occurs when one man checks out of his life and another checks in.  The Idaho wilderness outside the fictional town of Fife plays an active role in the story, its remoteness leading to difficult births, a young mother’s desperation, and a teenager’s loneliness, and its beauty lulling one character into decades of passivity broken only by fishing trips.  Barnes prose is lovely, often incantatory, as she weaves the story of the troubled Deracotte family.  I recently interviewed Barnes about the roles her personal history and subconscious ideas play in her fiction.

Montana

My favorite Montana novel this year was Mary Clearman Blew’s Jackalope Dreams (University of Nebraska Press, 390 pages, $24.95).  Although Blew has written several nonfiction books and short story collections over the years, this was her first novel.  The book tells the story of an aging country schoolteacher who is forced to confront the changes her rural Montana community is undergoing in part because wealthy newcomers are buying the land.  It’s a funny, sad, and keenly observed tale of the old West clashing with the new, and Blew succeeds in busting many Western myths over the course of her entertaining story.

I also recommend Montana native Ivan Doig’s new novel, The Eleventh Man (Harcourt, 406 pages, $26), an action-packed World War II epic in which Doig uses East Base in Great Falls as the launching pad to send his characters to every part of the globe, including Guam, New Guinea, Belgium, and Alaska.  Doig’s story, which follows the fates of the members of an undefeated college football team, was inspired by the fact that eleven starting football players for Montana State College in Bozeman died in World War II.

New Mexico

My favorite book set in New Mexico this year is Amy Shearn’s witty, insightful debut novel, How Far is the Ocean From Here (Shaye Areheart Books, 307 pages, $23).  The book tells the story of Susannah Prue, a nine-month pregnant surrogate mother for a wealthy Chicago couple who flees to the desert “somewhere between West Texas and East New Mexico” and installs herself at the “godforsaken fleabag” Thunder Lodge motel, where she tries to sort out her complex emotions and makes a set of quirky friends. I recently interviewed Shearn about her writing process and how she “always felt like anything could happen in the southwest.”

Check back tomorrow for my favorite books of 2008 from Oregon, Utah, Wyoming, and other Western states.

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