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Western Book Roundup

The Idaho Statesman reports that Senator Larry Craig is going to write a book "describing his experience over the past year," which has been an eventful one. If only Craig's book would go on sale the same week as the memoir of Thomas Beatie, the pregnant Bend man, setting up a regional scandal book smackdown! Perhaps Craig could vow never to write a book again if Beatie beats him in first-week sales, ala 50 Cent and Kayne West. And if only Craig's book would include a fold-out chart through which the reader could compare the width of his stance to that of the legendarily wide-stanced senator. A girl can dream…

Also in the Roundup: Blogs and podcasts cover the Book Expo, the Lighthouse LitFest kicks off in Denver, McCarthy's The Road finishes filming near Pittsburgh. [more]

New West Book Excerpt

Courtney White's new book Revolution on the Range (Island Press, $25.95) seeks common ground between the goals of Western ranchers and environmentalists. White reports on individuals who are working to end the "tribal warfare between denizens of the 'Old' West and advocates of the 'New,' with lassos on one side, and lattes on the other." Publishers Weekly wrote, "In a time when environmental reporting has become justifiably gloomy, this book is a refreshing breath of pragmatic optimism." In the following prologue, White introduces the ideas that fuel his book.

In 1996, I had an anguished question on my mind: why didn’t environmentalists and ranchers get along better? In theory they shared many of the same hopes and fears—a love of wildlife, a deep respect for nature, an appreciation for a life lived outdoors, and a common concern for healthy water, food, fiber, and liberty. [more]

Western Writers

In the second part of my interview with Alexandra Fuller, we discuss her passion for Wyoming, her concern for the state's welfare in the wake of the oil boom, her thoughts on other Wyoming writers, her run-in with Wyoming State Senator Kit Jennings, and how Jackson Hole "feels a whole lot smaller" when both she and Dick Cheney are in town.

New West: How has Wyoming changed in the years you've lived there?

AF: Well, between a quarter and a fifth of the land is now under oil and gas lease. The place where Colton fell used to be critical winter wildlife range in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem for the animals coming down from Grand Teton National Park. And if you got caught trespassing out there in the winter, you got into severe trouble. And in the summer if you were caught off road, they considered that range so critical that you would get in trouble. There used to be this kind of reverence for the open spaces. It absolutely was sacred ground. There was a deep understanding that this was a difficult place to make a living for man and for beast. It did feel wild—it felt African to me. You could walk all day and not see another human being. [more]

Western Writers

Alexandra Fuller grew up on a farm in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and her first book was a critically-acclaimed memoir of those years, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight. She followed it with a nonfiction book about an African soldier, 2004's Scribbling the Cat. In 1994, she moved to Wyoming and this month she published her first book set in the state, The Legend of Colton H. Bryant, a moving, poetic portrait of a charismatic Evanston, Wyo. man who died in February 2006 when he fell off the oil rig where he was working. I recently spoke to Fuller over the phone, and in this part of the interview, we discuss how she came to know the Bryant family and how the loss of her own siblings inspired her to pursue this story.

NW: Did you find any similarities between Colton's youth in Wyoming and your own in Africa?

AF: Oh yes. Horses and guns and the toughness of it, how tough you're expected to be from a very young age. Our fathers are practically the same man. Our mothers feel pretty similar too. I don't think Kaylee takes a lot of nonsense from her kids. She's very supportive but she's not a hand-holder. The most dreadful, chilling similarity is that in Wyoming, a lot of people die young, which is similar to the way I grew up. [more]

Western Book Roundup

From the department of Sadly, We Are Not Above This: US Weekly reports that Bend resident Thomas Beatie, "the world's first pregnant man, will write a memoir about his experience." (Via Gawker.) Love Makes a Family: A Memoir of Hardship, Healing and an Extraordinary Pregnancy will hit bookstores in September. There's no word on the publisher of the book yet. Apparently there is some dispute about whether Beatie is actually the first pregnant man in the world, but he's certainly the first pregnant male Bend resident, so he's got that going for him. Plus, since Beatie's pregnancy experience has been lived out in the public eye, whoever is publishing this memoir can rest assured that this memoir won't be fake, unlike that of another Oregon writer we could mention.

Also in the Roundup: Finalist for this year's High Plains Book Award are announced. [more]

New West Book Review

Horses That Buck: the Story of Champion Bronc Rider Bill Smith
By Margot Kahn
University of Oklahoma Press
194 pages, $24.95

I grew up going to the National Western Stock Show in Denver and Cheyenne's Frontier Days, but I never knew much about the rodeo cowboys that I saw—where they came from, what they did when they weren't riding broncos or bulls at these big showcases. Margot Kahn's Horses That Buck fills in the gaps for me through the life story of one cowboy, Bill Smith, who grew up in Bearcreek, Montana in 1941, moved to Cody, Wyoming as a teenager, and after many years of failure, broken bones, and living out of his car, rose to become a three-time World Champion Saddle Bronc rider. [more]

Western Writers

Heather Hansen and Kimberly Lisagor's new book Disappearing Places: 37 Places in Peril and What Can Be Done to Help Save Them takes an in-depth look at the environmental hazards facing tourist destinations across the world, from Yellowstone to Machu Picchu to the Congo Basin. Hansen, the Boulder-based half of the duo, grew up in New York and after graduating from Mount Holyoke College, worked at the Sunday Independent in Johannesburg, South Africa. "I’d studied apartheid in college and had a great desire to see how South Africa was adjusting to democratic rule," she explained. Since then she has contributed to many books and magazines (including New West), and won the Harper's award for Distinguished Magazine writing in 1999. I recently interviewed Hansen via email about how the book came about, Colorado's endangered places, and why Boulder is a "terrible" base for a freelance writer. Heather Hansen will discuss and sign her book in Denver at the Tattered Cover (LoDo) on May 28 (7:30 p.m.), in Boulder on May 31 at Patagonia (4:30-6:30 p.m.) and at Border's on June 7 (5:30 p.m.), and in Portland at Powell's on July 17 (7:30 p.m.).

New West: How long have you lived in Boulder, and what brought you here?

Heather Hansen: Just before moving to Boulder six years ago, I was living in New York and doing some reporting for a book on the aftermath of the World Trade Center destruction. I spent all day talking to women who had lost their husbands, and children whose parents had been killed. Every day I was devastated for them, but I learned a lesson that’s stayed with me: if there’s something you want to do in life, get to it. I’d lived on both coasts, and abroad, but I really wanted to spend some time near the mountains. And now I’m home.

[more]

Western Book Roundup

Popular western novelist Zane Grey's one-room cabin in Oregon will now be preserved for everyone, according to Jeff Barnard of the Associated Press. (Via Texas Pages.) Barnard writes: "One of the most popular sites on the Rogue River is a rude one-room cabin of peeled logs and hand-split shingles. The cabin was once owned by Zane Grey, best known for his Western novels including 'Riders of the Purple Sage.' But now the 32 acres and the buildings on it belong to everyone."

Also in the Roundup: Utah State's Chris Cokinos wins this year's John Burroughs Prize, and Westword names NewWest.Net/Books the "Best Literary Blog" in the 2008 Best of Denver issue. [more]

New West Children's Book Review

Buffalo Music
by Tracey E. Fern
Illustrated by Lauren Castillo
Clarion Books, 32 pages, $16

Last year when I was reading Michael Punke's excellent Last Stand, one detail about the how buffalo came to be rescued from the brink of extinction stood out: many of Yellowstone's buffalo came from a single herd preserved and nurtured by a woman named Mary Ann Goodnight, who settled in West Texas's Palo Duro Canyon in 1876. She and her husband Charles raised orphaned buffalo calves left behind after the mass slaughter, and their animals served as crucial breeding stock for the restoration of the Yellowstone herd. This seems to be the perfect tidbit to interest children in the history of the buffalo in the West, and Tracey E. Fern's debut picture book for ages 4 to 8, Buffalo Music, tells just this tale of one pioneer woman whose actions helped avert a species' extinction. [more]

New West Book Review

The Enders Hotel
By Brandon R. Schrand
University of Nebraska Press
230 pages, $17.95

Brandon R. Schrand's vivid new memoir chronicles his childhood growing up in the Enders Hotel in Soda Springs, Idaho. In the 1970's, Schrand's grandparents restored the place, originally built in 1919, and welcomed all kinds of people, especially the itinerant laborers of the region. Schrand, who teaches creative writing at the University of Idaho, moved back and forth to the Enders as his mother's and stepfather's jobs came and went. "Because we were job seekers," he writes, "we endured the perpetual ebb and flow of work—the overtime followed, always, by the lay-offs, the shut-downs, the walkouts."

Brandon Schrand will appear at Common Knowledge Bookstore in Sandpoint, Idaho (May 16, 4:30 p.m.), Fact & Fiction in Missoula (June 13), and at The Enders Hotel in Soda Springs, Idaho (June 30, 5 p.m.).
[more]

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