Jackson Hole News

New West Book Essay

An enigmatic and rough ranch hand meets a gregarious socialite on a guest ranch, they fall in love, and though they live separate lives, they remain close until her death. This real life, turn-of-the-century affair between Wyoming cowboy Enoch Cal Carrington and East Coast publishing heir Eleanor “Cissy” Patterson is an obvious plunder for Western fiction. The unlikely relationship is also an analogy for a Jackson Hole where Western live-and-let-live ideals converge, often begrudgingly, with East Coast sophistication. In 2008, Alta, Wyo. resident, Earle Layser retold Cal and Cissy’s story in I Always Did Like Horses and Women: The Enoch Cal Carrington Story. The nonfiction account caught the attention of valley novelist Tina Welling, who studied Layser’s book, among others, for her latest novel. That Welling released Cowboys Never Cry (NAL Trade, $15) around the same time late last year that Layser issued his new collection of essays, titled Green Fire (Dancing Pine, $21.95), at first seemed to be just coincidental, but turned out to be opportune, the result of a shared interest in the paradox that Westerners whose livelihoods depend on the land often find themselves at odds with its preservation. 

25 Best Western Books of 2010: Oregon, Utah, Wyoming & Other Western States

Today I continue my list of the 25 best books in the West for 2010 with books set in Oregon, Utah, Wyoming, and other western states, and books that roam throughout the region.  Please add your favorite Western books of the year in the comments.  If you leave a comment with your favorite book (or anything else you’d like to say) by Sunday, December 12, you’ll be entered for a chance to win a copy of one of the best books in the West this year, The Wilding by Benjamin Percy.  Check back Wednesday I’ll announce my picks for the top six books of 2010 set in the West.

Oregon

My two favorite books from Oregon this year are both by young writers raised in the high desert of central Oregon near Bend.

River House (Tin House Books, 272 pages, $16.95) is the searchingly honest memoir of a young woman struck with an unconventional dream: After college and years of world travel, Sarahlee Lawrence decides she wants to build her own log house on the high desert ranch in central Oregon where she was raised.  This is nonfiction, but Lawrence’s life provided her the material of a classic, woman-vs.-nature drama that makes this a transfixing read.  Even if the closest you’ve ever come to building a house involved the use of Lincoln Logs, you’ll be taken in by River House.

Western Book Roundup

I recently reviewed Brian Leung’s heartfelt historical novel Take Me Home for the Dallas Morning News.  Set in a rough mining town in Wyoming, the book tells the story an improbable love affair that develops between a white woman and a Chinese man. 

Leung’s novel got me thinking about the many books published over the past year or so that address the theme of Chinese miners in the Old West.  There’s The Poker Bride: The First Chinese in the Wild West by Christopher Corbett (which I reviewed for New West) and Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon, by R. Gregory Nokes. That Idaho massacre is central to Dana Hand’s novel Deep Creek (which David Abrams reviewed for New West), and Chinese miners had a cameo role in Ivan Doig’s Montana mining novel, Work Song (which Abrams reviewed for New West and I reviewed for the Dallas Morning News).  All of these books are worth checking out for anyone who has an interest in Chinese immigrants in the Old West, or who is just looking for a good read.

Also in the Roundup: Jackson Hole Review is revived with a call for submissions, Temple Grandin’s new book, and Boulder Book Store’s generosity.

FALL MUSKIES NOT FOR WUSSIES

Beware of Muskie Fever. It can ruin the life of a perfectly normal fishaholic.

And contagious? You betcha. I caught it even before I went anywhere near water where the mighty muskellunge lurks. Then, last year, I finally had my first chance at a muskie, and what an introduction! Six long days and 8,600 casts without a single hook-up. (Click here to read the gory details.)

But even such a royal butt kicking can’t come close to curing Muskie Fever. Instead of giving up and going back to trout, I couldn’t wait to go back for another beating. Catching a muskie was high on my life list, so it had to happen. All I needed was a better time and place, eh?

NEW WEST FEATURE

When it comes to the disagreements over mule deer on Wyoming’s Pinedale Anticline, common ground is in short supply and emotions are high over this intensely developed patch of land. A new report about the herd’s decline has caused no shortage of head butting.

The report released in late October, has wildlife managers looking for the next level of mitigation, trying to help a mule deer population that appears to be hemorrhaging. The herd on the Mesa had declined 60 percent since development began in 2001, and 28 percent since 2005, according to the report.

Survival rates are also down on the plateau. In the past, Mesa survival rates for adult does had been about 80 percent. This year they dropped to 70 percent, indicating that does coming off the winter range were in much poorer condition than usual.

The population decreases will force wildlife managers to step up mitigation efforts and explore new measures to maintain or increase the mule deer population, according to a Bureau of Land Management environmental impact Record of Decision from 2008. 

SASKATCHEWAN FISHING LODGES

I’ve had all kinds of fishing experiences, and some of them--perhaps too many of them--have been in somewhat primitive, if not brutal, conditions. Roughin’ it is okay, I guess. I’ve done plenty of it, but now, as I get older every year, I’ve discovered that a little relaxation and indulgence goes just fine with fishing.

Which is one reason I thoroughly enjoyed my stay at Selwyn Lake Lodge.

Western Book Conferences & Festivals

Equality State Book Festival
Where: Casper, Wyoming
When: Every other year, usually in September. The next festival is scheduled for Fall 2012.
What: Taking place in windy Casper, Wyoming, the Equality State Book Festival is one of Wyoming’s biggest literary events. Put on every other year at Casper College, the third Equality State Book Festival was held on September 24 and 25 in conjunction with the 24th annual Casper College/ARTCORE Literary Conference. Almost twenty authors and illustrators gathered in Casper for a variety of literary events: readings, panel discussions, book signings, creative writing craft talks, a gala banquet, and a night poetry slam.
Cost: Free except for tickets to the gala banquet.

Nina McConigley, who has participated in the last three Equality State Book Festivals, offers her report on the event.

Writers, artists, and lovers of all things literary gathered at the third annual Equality State Book Festival, which took place in Casper, Wyoming, September 24-25.

This year’s participants included Jack Gantos, award-winning novelists Jaimee Wriston Colbert and John Vernon, children’s author and illustrator Zak Pullen, teaching talent Gene Gagliano, poets Ravi Shankar and Robert Wrigley, Alaskan author and illustrator Ray Troll, and Idaho memoirist and novelist Kim Barnes, along with many others. Nonfiction notable Lee Gutkind, judge of the 2010 Wyoming Arts Council fellowship contest, also read with recipients of this year’s fellowships at the fellowship prize reading. 

New West Book Review

Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives
by Brad Watson
W.W. Norton and Company, 268 pages, $23.95

In Brad Watson’s new story collection, Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives, most of the families crumble, some almost as quickly as they form.  Watson grew up in Mississippi, has taught creative writing at the University of Wyoming since 2005, and sets most of his stories in the American South.  Although family disintegration is a common subject for short fiction, Watson’s stories are full of surprises, often involving a note of the uncanny, such as a disturbing fortune teller who might be a gypsy, and a mysterious couple who could be escapees from a mental institution, or, as they claim in the absorbing title story, aliens from another planet. 

In several stories, women have a craving to eat dirt—the practice called geophagy, once common in Mississippi among poor white and black women—that in Watson’s stories gives the women an otherworldly quality, as though they have one foot among the living and one among the dead.

Brad Watson will discuss Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives at the Tattered Cover (Colfax) on Monday, April 19 at 7:30 p.m.

Western Book Roundup

And now the moment we’ve all been waiting for: two weeks ago I asked New West readers to vote on what book I should review next.  I was delighted and relieved when several people voted.  The winner, with four votes, is Staking Her Claim: Women Homesteading the West by Marcia Meredith Hensley.  I’ll review it next Monday.  And since the voting was so tight, I plan to review the runner-up, How it Looks Going Back by Doris Knowles Pulis, in a few weeks as well. 

As for the other two books: they’ll go back on my guilt pile, and I’ll get to them as soon as I can.  Every time I open the cabinet where I keep my un-reviewed books, the books scream, “Pick me!  Pick me!” I’m okay with it, but it frightens the kids.

• Wyofile has an in-depth feature by Susan Gray Gose on Wyoming mystery and thriller novelist C.J. Box.  Gray Gose writes that Box “cranks out 1,000 words a day,” “publishes two books a year,” and that one of his novels could be adapted into a screenplay soon:

“The producers of About Schmidt (the 2002 New Line Cinema comedy) bought the rights to Blue Heaven. While many optioned books languish, this one seems to be moving forward. It’s received financing, and actors Jack Nicholson, Alec Baldwin and Joe Pesci have signed on.”

Western Book Roundup

The movie ”Temple Grandin,” about the life of Temple Grandin, the Colorado writer, animal expert, and advocate for people with autism, premiered on HBO this weekend.  The movie stars Claire Danes, a casting choice that Grandin told Erin O’Toole of KUNC she was “absolutely delighted” with.  Grandin spoke with O’Toole as she was in the midst of traveling around the country to promote the film. 

Grandin said of Danes, “She put this wig on and dressed up in my clothes and became me.” Grandin is pleased with the movie.  “I love the way the movie shows how my mind works,” she said.  (I reviewed Grandin’s most recent book, Animals Make Us Human, last year.)

• One of my favorite writers, Edward P. Jones, is the “eminent writer in residence” at the University of Wyoming in Laramie this semester.  I saw on the Wyoming Arts Blog that Jones will read and sign his books Thursday, Feb. 18, at 5 p.m. in the University Wyoming Union ballroom.  If you haven’t checked out Jones’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Known World or his two masterful story collections, do yourself a favor and get reading! 

Also in the Roundup: Edward P. Jones and Alyson Hagy read in Laramie, the Patagonia Public Library throws its annual Writers’ Round-up, Dave Cullen is in the running for the Barnes & Noble Discover Award, New Mexico honors its writers, and Denver teens pick their favorite book of the year.