Bozeman News

New West Book Review

River House
by Sarahlee Lawrence
Tin House Books, 272 pages, $16.95

River House is the searchingly honest, foursquare 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.

There’s a daunting task ahead of Lawrence—building a log house with minimal equipment and the help of only her father, with just a frigid winter’s worth of time to complete the bulk of the project before she has to return to work as a river guide.  The story largely revolves around the elemental triad of mother, father, and child as Lawrence pushes the three of them through this job she’s set for herself. 

Sarahlee Lawrence will tour throughout the West this month to discuss River House.  Her stops include The Country Bookshelf in Bozeman on November 13 (4 p.m.), Fact & Fiction in Missoula on November 15 (7 p.m.), Chapter One Books in Hamilton on November 16 (7 p.m.), Maria’s Bookshop in Durango on November 17 (6:30 p.m.), Back of Beyond Books in Moab on November 18 (7 p.m.), The King’s English Bookshop in Salt Lake City on November 20 (2 p.m.), the Blue Sage Center in Paonia on November 22 (7 p.m.), and Bookworks in Albuquerque on November 30 (7 p.m.).

Western Book Roundup

Fiction writer Antonya Nelson‘s appealing essay about how she and her husband Robert Boswell have purchased several decaying buildings in an unnamed Colorado ghost town ran last week in the New York Times.  Nelson explained why she wouldn’t name the town:

“I wish I could reveal the name of this town, but a longstanding family policy that forbids the naming of idyllic mountain villages, lest they turn into tourist enclaves, prevents me. My family bought a miner’s shack in Telluride, Colo., in 1961, and you see what happened there.”

So Nelson describes the town only in this way:

“An old Colorado mining town at 9,400 feet, it is a place that produced plenty of silver and other shiny booty back in the day, and even more toxic residue (it was a Superfund site not that long ago). It is isolated and incorporated, yet without a single business. ‘None of your business’ might be the town motto.”

Also in the Roundup: High Plains Book Awards announced, Printed Page Bookshop in Denver gives away free books to benefit a local charity, and Oprah goes fly-fishing in Montana...maybe.

Western Book Conferences & Festivals

Montana Festival of the Book
Where: Missoula, Montana
When: Annually, in October.  This year’s festival was held October 29 through 30.
What: Readings, panel discussions, parties, and a book fair focused on all genres of literature from Montana and the West.
Cost: Almost all events are free and open to the public.

Friday, October 29, 7:30 a.m. I’m speeding along I-90 from Butte to Missoula, hurrying to meet Benjamin Percy for an interview before we both plunge into all the activities the Humanities Montana Festival of the Book has to offer.  I race through the Blackfoot River corridor, my Hyundai hugging the dark ribbon of interstate.  Roadkill carcasses line the shoulder—half a mule deer here, a smear of skunk there.

I feel like I’m in a story by Ben Percy—or any one of the more than 100 other writers converging on Missoula.  Even on an ordinary day, the so-called “Paris of the Rockies” is teeming with literary hotshots—swing a roadkill by the tail and you’re bound to hit a writer.

This year marks the 11th annual Festival of the Book and offers sessions on everything from “Storytime with Curious George” to “Curiouser & Curiouser: Fun Montana Facts with Ednor Therriault.” In between, attendees can bounce between readings by Jim Lynch (Border Songs), Kevin Canty (Everything), Stan Lynde (To Kill a Copper King), and David Allen Cates (Freeman Walker).  Or they can listen to Ellen Baumler spin ghost stories, Hugh Ambrose describe the War in the Pacific, and Jack Horner tell “How to Build a Dinosaur.” Last year (my first festival), I was only able to stay for half a day; this year, I’m going for the whole enchilada.

New West Book Review

The Wake of Forgiveness
by Bruce Machart
320 pages, $26

I tried to think of a way to approach writing about Bruce Machart’s debut novel, The Wake of Forgiveness, in my usual third-person book reviewer way, but I don’t come to this story of a grievous rift between Czech-American farming brothers in Texas during the early 1900’s with a blank slate, so it’s only right that I fess up. 

I’m Czech on my mother’s side—my generation is the first group Czechs mixed with something not Czech, even though the family has been in America for over 150 years.  At some point shortly after my ancestors, named Hotovy, arrived in America and settled in Nebraska near the “Bohemian Alps” that Ted Kooser has written about, there was a terrible argument between the brothers of the family, the upshot of which is that one branch disowned the other and changed the spelling of its name to Hottovy—that’s my line.  As the story goes, one branch of this family became known in the community as industrious and dependable, while the other one gained a reputation for being shiftless and lazy.  All the business owners in the area needed to know before they would extend credit to a person was whether he spelled his name with one T or two.  My family, of course, claims that the two-T Hottovys were the upstanding ones.

No one can remember what the cause of the split was, except to speculate that land was probably at the heart of it.  So it was with great interest that I read The Wake of Forgiveness, in which four Czech brothers suffer a rift in part over the acquisition of land.

Bruce Machart will discuss The Wake of Forgiveness at the King’s English Bookshop in Salt Lake City on November 11 at 7 p.m.

New West Travel Essay

Way up north in northern Saskatchewan on the 60th Parallel within sight of Northwest Territories is a massive body of almost-virgin fishing water called Ena Lake. The owners describe it--and the overall experience--as “unspoiled, uncrowded, and unforgettable.” Since I was fortunate enough to spend a few days this year, I know that slogan isn’t merely marketing hype. It’s more like an understatement.

Ena Lake Lodge is the only speck of civilization on the enormous lake and many miles of trackless wilderness in every direction, so you not only get that feeling of remoteness, you know Ena Lake and several other smaller lakes lodge guests can fish have incredibly low fishing pressure.

STOP NEGOTIATING?

No reasonable deed goes unpunished, eh?

That must be how wildlife managers or advocates who actually want to resolve the wolf-delisting impasse must feel.

On September 23, I posted a commentary with the title, Pro-Wolf Groups Blew It where I criticized the left-leaning plaintiffs in the various lawsuits for pushing too hard, too long, and turning fence setters and most western politicians into the anti-wolf camp and possibly endangering the integrity of the Endangered Species Act.

Now, the pendulum has swung to the far right.

Western Book Roundup

Last week, the New York Times featured a profile of Thomas McGuane, in which Charles McGrath describes McGuane as “tall, raw-boned and authentically Western looking.” This makes me wonder, am I authentically Western looking?  Are you?

If you sometimes worry that you’re not raw-boned enough to be authentically Western looking, a good way to burnish your Western credibility would be to attend the 11th annual Montana Festival of the Book this weekend, from Thursday, October 28 through Saturday October 30.  Many of the authors we’ve featured in New West will participate.  (Follow the links below to find our reviews of these folks.) Most of the events are free--a few exceptions include the fundraiser for CutBank, the University of Montana’s literary magazine, at The Top Hat on Thursday, October 28 ($10, 8 p.m.), and the author reception and book signing on Friday (5:30 p.m., $25).

On October 29:

• Jim Lynch, Kevin Canty, and Benjamin Percy—three novelists with impressive recent books—will read at the Holiday Inn (Three Rivers Room,1 p.m.).

New West Book Review

Driving on the Rim
by Thomas McGuane
306 pages, $26.95

Dr. Berl Pickett, the narrator of Thomas McGuane’s funny and thoughtful tenth novel, is an odd one.  First there’s his name—Driving on the Rim begins, as Dickens’ Great Expectations did, with the narrator’s account of his unusual name.  Properly Irving Berlin Pickett, Berl explains, “my very forceful mother, a patriot and evangelical Christian, named me after the author of ‘God Bless America.’” Berl’s parents raised him on the road, free of many social graces, home-schooling him as they traveled around as itinerant carpet cleaners.  Berl did get an education, but not of the usual sort: when Berl was a teenager, he and his parents lived with his Aunt Silbie, who put him to strenuous use: “In my first six months in action Aunt Silbie taught me ninety-nine percent of everything I would ever know about sex,” Berl reports.

Thomas McGuane will discuss Driving On The Rim in Bozeman at the Country Book Shelf on October 28 (7 p.m.), and in Denver at the Tattered Cover (LoDo) on November 15 (7:30 p.m.).

Western Writers

With Driving on the Rim, his first novel since 2002’s The Cadence of Grass, Thomas McGuane has delivered one of the finest books of his career.  The novel primarily pivots around the trials and tribulations of Dr. Irving Berlin “Berl” Pickett who must fight small-town gossip and politics to preserve his reputation in Livingston, Montana, after a patient dies under his care and he’s charged with negligent homicide.  Like many McGuane characters, Pickett spends most of the book trying to find his center of gravity; when times get really tough, he goes back to house-painting—a job which helped pay his way through medical school.  I had a chance to talk with McGuane when he stopped by Butte on his way from his 2,000-acre ranch in McLeod, Montana to Missoula where he would begin his book tour.  Our conversation was punctuated by his frequent laughter, which rolls as easily out of this throat as it does off the pages of his fiction.

New West: Was there any one incident or person which inspired the novel?

Thomas McGuane: I’ve lived in Montana now for 43 years—mostly in towns of comparable size—and there are a lot of people in those towns who are outsiders.  They may be fourth-generation Montanans, but for one reason or another, they’ve just never seemed to fit into the melting pot.  For example, when I first lived in Livingston, you were either a railroad family or you were a ranch family and if you were something else you were going to have a wobbly path.  I was intrigued by the idea that somebody (like Berl Pickett) who was bright and came up through this Fundamentalist madhouse and economic insecurity could end up being a doctor.  I was also intrigued by the idea that in small towns, doctors still tend to be these sacrosanct figures but they have a hard time living up to it.  So I thought about a guy who comes out of nowhere in a community, achieves a modicum of success, but never believes in himself.  What does that do to his behavior?

Thomas McGuane will discuss Driving On The Rim in Salt Lake City at the City Library Auditorium on October 23 (2 p.m.), in Bozeman at the Country Book Shelf on October 28 (7 p.m.), and in Denver at the Tattered Cover (LoDo) on November 15 (7:30 p.m.).

THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION?

On September 29, I wrote about a historic court decision overturning the Forest Service’s (FS) policy of charging an entrance fee to visit or park in the Red Rock High Impact Recreation Area (HIRA) in Arizona’s Coconino National Forest. In my commentary, I not only urged the FS to forego appealing the ruling but also to throw in the towel and comply with the court decree and stop charging the fee--and then purge the National Forest System of all 95 HIRAs.

I’m one for three.