Part 2: Oregon, Utah, Wyoming, and Other Western States

Best Books of 2008, Part Two

In part two of the NewWest.Net/Books Best Books of 2008 list, I’ll discuss my favorite books set in Oregon, Utah, Wyoming, and other Western states.

Oregon

One of my favorite books set in Oregon actually was published late last year, but I didn't get to mention it in last year's best books list. Benjamin Percy's short story collection Refresh, Refresh (Graywolf Press, 249 pages, $15) makes the landscape of central Oregon come alive, enhancing the mystery and brutality of the characters. The title story (which won the Plimpton Prize from the Paris Review and earned a spot in the Best American Short Stories 2006) conveys searing authenticity, brutal energy, and a pitch-perfect dramatization of the impact of the Iraq war on communities that are losing their parents to combat. This year, Percy won a $50,000 Whiting Award for his work. (Check out my interview with Percy from earlier this year.)

Part 1: Colorado, Idaho, Montana and New Mexico

Best Western Books of 2008

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.

NEW WEST BOOKs

Excerpt: Famous Firearms of the Old West, by Hal Herring

Simply put, Hal Herring's new book, Famous Firearms of the Old West (Hardcover, TwoDot, $24.95) is a collection of stories about 12 guns that shaped the history of a region.

But while the firearms, owned by the likes of Geronimo, Wild Bill Hickock and Western gunman Tom Horn, are the fulcrum of the book, the masterful storytelling -- of the hands that held them, the battles that revolved around them and the historical context in which they fired -- is what makes the book sing.

As Herring, a NewWest.Net contributor, writes himself in the preface, the guns "exist now as windows into the men and women who fought -- righteously or not -- and died, or were willing to die, with them. What they conjure up can be a powerful magic."

That "powerful magic," captured by one of the region's best storytellers, is what sets this book apart.

In the following excerpt, Chapter 9, Herring tells the story of Tom Horn, one of the West's most famous bounty hunters, and his Winchester Model 1894 rifle. -Courtney Lowery

WESTERN BOOK ROUNDUP

Eating - and Reading - Locally

Thanksgiving is a good time to eat, and it’s a good time to think about what and how we eat. Books on our food culture have almost become a genre in and of itself in recent years. Several excellent books have peeked into the back of the cupboard to see some of the dark corners we’d rather not see. Others have looked for another approach to food.

Here are a few, by Western authors, that are worth a Thanksgiving Day read by the woodstove before you drift off on a tryptophan cloud.

NEW WEST BOOK REVIEW

“White Mary,” and a Heart of Darkness

The White Mary
By Kira Salak
Henry Holt and Company, 368 pages, $25

Author Kira Salak lives in Montana, but her writing takes her – and her readers – to some of the most forbidding places on the planet.

Usually those voyages are in the form of travel essays. Salak is a contributing writer to National Geographic Adventure magazine. Her thoughtful reportage, from the Amazon to Timbuktu, is often anthologized in the annual Best American Travel Writing series by the Houghton Mifflin Co. Her fiction has appeared in Best New American Voices.

Salak returns to familiar ground as a traveler to exotic lands, only this time as a novelist, in her debut novel The White Mary. She brings to the novel the same profound insight and deft storytelling that have made her essays such standouts. With it, she also joins the ranks of travelers like Paul Theroux and Peter Matthiessen who have found themselves comfortable both in the fiction and nonfiction stacks.

WESTERN BOOK ROUNDUP

National Outdoor Book Awards Announced

This years National Outdoor Book Awards honor crusaders to save the American chestnut tree, Grand Canyon explorers and the widow of mountaineer Alex Lowe, rebuilding her life after the death of her husband in a Himalayan mountaineering accident.

“What a year it was,” says Ron Watters, professor emeritus at Idaho State University. “The writing in the outdoor field has always been good, but it just keeps getting better – and this year it was outstanding.”

WESTERN BOOK ROUNDUP

Western Books, Authors Land on Amazon List

Amazon.com has come out with its Best Books of 2008 list, and, not surprisingly, it features several books from and about the West.

Coming in at No. 5 is Westminster, Colo., author David Wroblewski’s blockbuster The Story of Edward Sawtelle. It’s been a good year for Wroblewski. His tale, a twist on Hamlet set in rural Wisconsin, is the current pick of Oprah’s Book Club, a dream for just about any author, let alone a debut novelist. (Read his NewWest.Net interview here.)

Guest Column

Break the Cycle: Bring Interior Back to its Roots

Every four years those of us living in the Intermountain West --a largely federal landscape filled with vast potential and spectacular resources -- find ourselves wondering who will be appointed as our new landlord, and why.

Past Secretaries of the Interior have been assigned an acutely partisan and political role, typically delivered as a reward to a former Governor or loyal ideologue. This triggers a vicious cycle. A Dirk Kempthorne or Gale Norton sets out to undo the work of a Bruce Babbitt, who reversed James Watt’s extremes, who in turn tried to roll back the legacy of Cecil Andrus. The next appointment to Interior can continue to whipsaw the West, offering more of the same, or provide it with a deep-rooted, nonpartisan voice of pragmatism and stability.

Here in the American West, there is no more respected conservation leader than Utah writer and natural historian, Terry Tempest Williams.

New West Book Review

Mormons & Taxidermy: Alissa York’s “Effigy”

Effigy
By Alissa York
St. Martin's Press, 342 pages, $25.95

Effigy, Alissa York's fascinating, accomplished new novel set largely in Utah territory in 1867, transports the reader to Mormon ranch where the four wives of Erastus Hammer pursue their separate destinies within the strictures placed on them by their marriages and their society. York lives in Toronto, and Effigy was a finalist for last year's Giller Prize in Canada. It's easy to see why—Effigy is written in convincing, image-rich prose and features a singular cast of characters who interact in complex and surprising ways.

The first wife of Erastus Hammer, Ursula, is a formidable presence overseeing and disapproving of much that goes on at the ranch. She is the only wife who behaves outwardly as one might expect of a Mormon pioneer woman—spending her time cooking, cleaning, and raising children—yet she is far from a simple figure. Through lucid flashbacks, we learn that as a young woman in Nauvoo, Illinois, she developed a desperate crush on Joseph Smith, who founded the Mormon religion. Devastated by his death at the hands of a mob in 1844, she collected a lock of Smith's hair, which she keeps in a ring and occasionally allows her children to touch, with appropriate reverence.