New West Book Review
Desert Daze: Amy Shearn’s “How Far is the Ocean from Here”
A winning debut novel about a pregnant woman stuck in the New Mexico desert.
How Far is the Ocean From Here
By Amy Shearn
Shaye Areheart Books, 307 pages, $23
Amy Shearn's surefooted debut novel How Far is the Ocean From Here transports readers to the "godforsaken fleabag" Thunder Lodge motel in the middle of a stretch of desert "somewhere between West Texas and East New Mexico," the last place you'd think the nine-month-pregnant protagonist, Susannah Prue, would want to be in high summer. In the time-honored tradition followed by those who've made a hash of their lives, Susannah is fleeing west. She is serving as the surrogate mother for a wealthy couple, and with the due date two weeks away, she impulsively drives out of Chicago and fetches up at the Thunder Lodge.
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New West Book Review
Land Art Rover: Erin Hogan’s “Spiral Jetta”
Spiral Jetta: A Road Trip Through the Land Art of the American West
By Erin Hogan
University of Chicago Press
180 pages, $20
My husband announced one day that he and my daughter had been out making "land art." The next time I walked out back I saw what he meant: they had gathered dozens of dandelions and arranged them in a yellow streak flowing down a channel in a boulder, the sort of thing artist Andy Goldsworthy did in Thomas Riedelsheimer's beautiful documentary Rivers & Tides. I'm a little hesitant to admit this, but we're land art junkies. We've been to see Goldsworthy's work at the Storm King Art Center in New York, and we've made a pilgrimage to Dia: Beacon, the New York museum that is the hub of the Dia Foundation, which funds and maintains much of the land art in the American West.
But we haven't been to see Robert Smithson's famous "Spiral Jetty" in Utah, and we live only one state away from it, so we can't claim any real cred, unlike Erin Hogan, who braved endless miles, desert heat, poor directions, rutted roads, loneliness, and dubious bar company to take readers to the "Spiral Jetty" and beyond in her endearing first book, Spiral Jetta.
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Western Book Roundup
Denver Book Burglar Sentenced
Last year I mentioned the arrest of the Denver booknapper, Thomas Pilaar, who checked out about 1,400 books and DVDs from Denver-area libraries and attempted to sell them online. Pilaar pleaded guilty to theft and last week was sentenced to "10 years in prison and ordered to pay $53,549 of restitution," according to Tille Fong of the Rocky Mountain News. During the year between his arrest and his sentencing, it seems that the formerly moustached Pilaar took the time to further cultivate his facial hair.
I can't think of a way to segue gracefully into the non-felon portion of today's Roundup, so I guess I'll just proceed: Steven Wingate emailed to point out a new book deal for a fellow Colorado writer, Irene Vilar. Matthew Thornton of Publishers Weekly reported that Vilar recently sold her memoir Impossible Motherhood to Other Press.
Also in the Roundup: David Wroblewski's continued success and Albuquerque's Cary Herz is honored.
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Western Book Roundup
Idaho Bookstore Owner Dies in Car Accident
This week brought some sad news for the Idaho book community: Sun Valley Online reports that Gary Hunt, the owner of Iconoclast Books in Ketchum and the Sun Valley Mall, was killed in a car accident Saturday morning. Sun Valley Online established the blog Gary Hunt Remembrances for people to leave their messages about the man whom they describe as "a kind soul and passionate family and business man."
Also in the Roundup: Oregon native Benjamin Percy makes the long list for the Frank O'Connor Prize, Idaho's Brandon R. Schrand receives several honors, Deanne Stillman interviews Larry McMurtry, and Las Comadres launch a Latino book club to meet in Utah and New Mexico, among other states
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LET'S GET OUR WORDS STRAIGHT
Wilderness is Multiple Use
Have you ever heard somebody say they prefer "multiple use" over Wilderness? I have what seems like a thousand times, and every time I hear it, I say to myself, wrong!
So, it seems like a good time to say it out loud because the words, "multiple use" have been lost in the Wilderness.
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CLASS ACTION SUITS TO BE FILED TUESDAY IN ARIZONA, COLORADO
Public Land Owners Taking RAT, Forest Service to Civil Court
Enough is enough, say the owners of our national forests. And they may have finally found a way to spike the Recreation Access Tax or RAT.
After years of working through cumbersome administrative channels and several rounds in criminal court, people interested in reasonable and free access to their public land have dragged the Forest Service (FS) into civil court. In addition to asking for injunctions against collecting "illegal" fees while the case is being litigated and if successful the fee program terminated, the plaintiffs in the class action complaints--to be filed tomorrow morning in Arizona and Colorado--want all fee collection signs removed and all fees collected through the years under the program returned to the people who shouldn't have had to pay them.
Suffice to say, it's panic time in the FS offices back in Washington, D.C.
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2008 COMMENTS WORTH REPEATING III
The Wilderness Drought and How the Green Group Feud Keeps it Alive
Over the past two years, I've been periodically posting selections of my favorite comments from readers of my columns and articles. I plan to continue doing this, but differently. Instead of listing comments chronologically, I've edited them into general subject areas. In this case, here are a few insightful comments that came in over the past few months on several articles on the wilderness drought and the green group feud that keeps it alive and if not endless. Enjoy.
Editor's Note: For a complete list of Comments Worth Repeating, click here.
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A TECTONIC FIX LONG OVERDUE
Merge, Remake the Forest Service
Last month, the General Accountability Office (GA0) announced it was studying a plan to take the Forest Service out of the Department of Agriculture and merge it into the Department of the Interior. Predictably, this news was met with a chorus of yawns because we've heard many grandiose plans for reorganizing federal land-managing agencies. In every case, after significant wasted staff time and much stress for employees, nothing happens.
But this one wasn't a yawner for me because something like this really needs to happen. This time, let's get serious and seize this opportunity to remake the Forest Service (FS), an agency lost in the today's political landscape.
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SO SAYS THE MAN WHO MADE IT HAPPEN
Wolf Recovery Turned Out as Planned
Some NewWest.Net readers might be a bit "overwolfed," but I thought the views of the man who probably did more to return the Big Dog to the Rocky Mountain West than any other person on Earth could be interesting.
And surprisingly, to me at least, he thinks it all turned out about how he expected.
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IS THIS SO MUCH TO ASK?
More Fly-Fishing-Only Rivers, Please
Before all the non-flycasters get excited about the headline, I should say that I like all kinds of fishing, not just fly fishing, a problem that has made my life a constant struggle against poverty. In fact, I have more spinning and baitcasing rods than fly rods, and probably use them more, too.
Nonetheless, today, I'm feeling sorry for those anglers who only use fly rods. I think fisheries managers should throw them a bone by designating a few stretches of a few rivers as fly-fishing-only--especially a few rivers with steelhead in them.
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