New West Book Review
Loneliness and Laughter: Daniel Orozco’s ‘Orientation”
Idaho-based writer Daniel Orozco‘s first book, Orientation and Other Stories (Faber and Faber, 162 pages, $23), journeys to so many different places—from life among the perpetual painters of the Golden Gate Bridge, to Paraguay, where the deposed president of a Latin-American country lives in sumptuous exile, to white-collar and blue-collar American workplaces in Washington, California, and elsewhere—that it’s hard to believe it’s less than two hundred pages long. The years of care Orozco has put into this book—which was more than fifteen years in the making—are evident in every honed sentence.
You can tell Orozco was having fun, challenging himself to try every possible narrative technique—first-person, second-person, third-person, perspectives that are limited to one character and some that are omniscient (including one that ventures briefly into the perspective of a pack of dogs), stories composed of several distinct episodes, and one comprised of entries from a police officer’s log that build into a hilarious love story.
Daniel Orozco will kick off his book tour in Moscow, Idaho with a reading from his pickup truck in front of BookPeople on Main Street on June 10 (7 p.m.). He’ll read in Portland on June 23 at Powell’s Books on Hawthorne (7:30 p.m.).
Western Book Roundup
Denver Librarian Finalist for Amazon Award & Jess Walter’s ‘Poets’ Becomes a Film
Gregory Hill, who works as a book buyer at the University of Denver’s Penrose Library, is one of three finalists in the general fiction category for this year’s Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. According to the contest website, Hill’s novel, East of Denver, “tells the story of Shakespeare Williams, who returns to his family’s farm in eastern Colorado to find his widowed, senile father living in squalor. Facing the loss of the farm, Shakespeare hatches a plot with his father and a motley crew of his former high school classmates to rob the local bank.”
Greg Glasgow recently interviewed Hill for the University of Denver blog. Glasgow writes:
“The story is based on Hill’s own past growing up in Joes, Colo. (called Dorsey, Colo., in the book), and his more recent experiences watching his father’s battle against Alzheimer’s disease.”
Also in the Roundup: The winners of the Reading the West Book Award, Filming on the adaptation of Jess Walter’s The Financial Lives of the Poets begins in August, a poetry contest sponsored by the Denver County Fair, and regional book tours for Karl Marlantes, Janet Fox, Emma Donaghue, and Justin Cronin.
Western Book Roundup
Book Festivals of the West 2011
Each year readers and writers gather to celebrate the written word at book festivals, fairs, and writing conferences throughout the West. Although there are a few spring festivals, everything really begins to pick up in June, and the schedule remains busy through November.
The offerings vary from those that concentrate on helping writers improve their craft, such as the Lighthouse Writers Workshop’s retreat in Grand Lake, Colo. (July 10th-15th), to those that introduce writers to readers through panels, readings, and book signings, such as the Montana Festival of the Book in Missoula (October 5th-7th). Some, such as the Aspen Summer Words Festival (June 19th-24th), combine workshops and readings. The workshops charge fees, but plenty of the festivals are free to attend, including the Montana Festival of the Book in Missoula and the Equality State Book Fair in Casper. Most workshops are already accepting applications for this year.
I’ve updated the Book Festivals of the West map with this year’s information when it was available. Please let me know if there are any more events to add or update—I’ll even throw this open for events in California and Texas. New West will run reports from the festivals again this year—we already have correspondents lined up for the Jackson Hole Writers Conference, Aspen Summer Words, and the Montana Festival of the Book, and are looking for more contributors.
New West Book Review
‘The Sisters Brothers’ Updates A Classic Western Novel Scenario
The Sisters Brothers (Ecco, 328 pages, $24.99), the second novel by Oregon’s Patrick DeWitt, is an update on a classic Western scenario, featuring hired killers on horseback out to get their man, traveling through hard-bitten frontier outposts in 1851. DeWitt has invigorated this well-worn path with wit, style, and imagination. Brothers Eli and Charlie Sisters are hit men working for a mysterious wealthy Oregon man named the Commodore. As the book opens, the Commodore has dispatched the Sisters brothers to kill Hermann Kermit Warm, who is currently being watched by Henry Morris, another of Commodore’s men, in California.
The Sisters brothers move across the country in a welter of violence, but the carnage goes down easily through the endearing narration of Eli, the younger, fatter, and more reluctant killer of the two. Eli narrates in a humorous, formal sort of diction that several critics have compared to that of Mattie Ross in True Grit, but Eli is more of a softie than Mattie ever was, collecting his half of the money whenever he and his brother kill someone for profit, but then giving it away to prostitutes and other women who sway his sensitive heart before he’s had a chance to spend any of it.
Patrick DeWitt will discuss The Sisters Brothers at University Bookstore in Seattle (4326 University Way) on May 18, at Powell’s Bookstore in Portland on May 19, and in Denver at the Tattered Cover (Colfax) on May 24.
Western Book Roundup
Paperbacks for Spring Reading & Literary Conference Season Kicks Off
Helen Thorpe‘s Colorado Book Award-winning Just Like Us is out in paperback now, and it includes an update about the lives of her subjects, four young Mexican women who grew up in Denver, two with U.S. citizenship and two without. On May 12, Thorpe will speak at the Arvada Public Library, and on May 15 she will participate in the Dean’s Forum at St. John’s Cathedral in Denver. In October, Just Like Us will be the featured book for One Book One Town in Carbondale, Colo.
• Brady Udall‘s excellent novel The Lonely Polygamist is out in paperback now too. Udall will appear at the Jackson Hole Writers Conference, along with Cristina García, Gary Ferguson, and Stephanie Elizondo Griest from June 23-26. The conference is open for registration now. (Check back on New West in late June for David Abrams‘ report on the conference.)
Also in the Roundup: Robin Black is this year’s Lighthouse Fly-By Writer, the new Mountain West Poetry Series, lit champ Jennifer Egan to headline the Literary Sojourn in Steamboat Springs, and Women Writing the West conference tickets are on sale now.
New West Book Review
Mild-Mannered Wine Steward Turns to Crime in Kevin Desinger’s Debut Novel
Kevin Desinger‘s debut novel, The Descent of Man (Unbridled Books, 272 pages, $24.95), jumps off to a brisk start when a forty-year-old man named Jim wakes up in the middle of the night and looks out his bedroom window to see two men attempting to steal his Camry. His wife Marla tells him to call the cops, but instead he heads outside to try to foil the theft. He observes them for a moment, then, as Desinger writes, “something in the Camry broke off with a loud snap, and one of the car thieves swore. At the same time something in me snapped too.” Jim, a mild-mannered man suddenly filled with rage, hops into the men’s truck, drives it down the road into a ditch, and beats it with a galvanized pipe. Jim can’t account for his own actions, and begins to craft a series of lies to cover up what he did from Marla and the police.
Kevin Desinger will discuss The Descent of Man in Portland at Powell’s on May 3 (7:30 p.m.), Woodstock Wine & Deli on May 7 (7:30 p.m.), and Broadway Books on May 10 (7:30 p.m.).
