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New West Book Review
Bierstadt Meets Bigfoot in Jonathan Evison’s “West of Here”
Deep into West of Here, Jonathan Evison’s entertaining, expansive novel of Western American settlement and its aftermath, a contemporary parolee named Timmon Tillman finds himself “forced to concede that his fate was inextricably linked in the most arbitrary ways to things and people and events he’d never given a thought to.” This idea serves as a sort of a structural thesis statement for the book, whose action jumps between the late nineteenth century beginnings of Port Bonita, a fictional town on the Pacific coast of Washington state, and the down-on-their-luck residents of the town in 2006, many of them descendents of the early settlers. The ties between the two sets of characters start out loose and gradually tighten as Evison expertly weaves an array of seemingly disconnected plot threads into a panoramic tapestry.
Jonathan Evison will discuss West of Here at the Tattered Cover (Colfax) on February 28 (7:30 p.m.), at the Boulder Book Store on March 1 (7:30 p.m.), at The King’s English in Salt Lake on March 3, and at several events throughout Washington and Oregon this spring.
[more]Western Book Roundup
Bankrupt Borders to Close Several Western Book Stores
Last week, Borders Books filed for bankruptcy and announced the closure of 30 percent of its stores. The stores slated to close include six in Colorado (in Boulder, Dillon, Littleton, Aurora, Greeley, and Grand Junction), two in New Mexico (Santa Fe and Albuquerque), two in Utah (Murray and Logan), and one in Montana (Bozeman). The Wall Street Journal put together a chart of the closing stores here.
Meanwhile, EdRants.com offers a list of independent alternatives to the closing Borders stores, with the mileage between the closing store and the existing indie bookstore. In Colorado, there are indie bookstores close at hand in every city with a closing Borders. Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article stated there were no independent bookstores in Grand Junction, Colo. In fact, there are two: Twice Upon A Time Bookshop at 2885 North Avenue and Grand Valley Books at 350 Main Street.
Also in the Roundup: Emma Donoghue in Aspen, the Los Angeles Times Book Award finalists announced, and Jonathan Evison brings his book tour to Colorado and Utah.
[more]New West Book Review
Cabin Building Drives Couple Toward Tragedy in David Vann’s “Caribou Island”
David Vann’s accomplished debut novel Caribou Island is the latest addition to a sub-branch of Western American literature that has surged recently: the house building horror story. Sarahlee Lawrence’s memoir River House details her Sisyphean struggles to build a log cabin in central Oregon, a quest that drives her relationship with her father to the brink. Last month, Annie Proulx published her first memoir, Bird Cloud, about her efforts to build a dream house on a remote plot of Wyoming land. Even though she wasn’t doing the building herself, Proulx also seems to have sacrificed some measure of her sanity and ultimately considered the enterprise a failure.
Now comes Gary and Irene, the discontented married couple at the center of David Vann’s compelling tragedy. They’ve lived on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula since they were in their twenties, when Gary quit his graduate studies in medieval literature because he wanted to move to Alaska. Now in his fifties, feeling the sting of dreams deferred, he decides it’s time to build a cabin on the remote Caribou Island and live out there, as he always planned they would before raising children and making a living got in the way.
[more]Western Book Roundup
Literary Gender Imbalance Uncovered by VIDA is Reflected in Western Lit
For some time I’ve noticed that the majority of the books submitted to me for review are written by men, a ratio I’d estimate at five books by men for every one book by a woman. I noticed this discrepancy particularly among the big six publishers—very few of the books set in the West produced by major publishers are written by women. I am more likely to find books written by women from small and academic presses. I wondered if this male dominance was just a Western thing.
As I read and enjoyed books regardless of the gender of their authors, I also noticed a disturbing trend, a formula that Western books by major publishers included again and again: a depiction of horses plus violence against women in books written by men. Usually these authors are compared to Cormac McCarthy, either in the blurbs or the jacket copy. I realize it weakens my argument not to mention these books by name, but I don’t want to single out anybody, because I think each writer chose to use these elements for personal, artistic reasons, and I don’t blame any of them for it. But I just may have been a wee bit crankier in my reviews of these books.
I began to dread reading books with horses on the cover. Sure, on the outside, it’s all the pretty horses, but on the inside it’s going to be all the beaten, cowering women.
Also in the Roundup: Denver Center Theatre Company to adapt Helen Thorpe’s Just Like Us, Books Editor Tom Walker leaves the Denver Post, David Abrams writes about the thriving Idaho literary scene, and Casper College hosts its Humanities Fest.
[more]Western Writers
An Interview with Eleanor Brown, Author of “The Weird Sisters”
Denver writer Eleanor Brown’s winning first novel, The Weird Sisters (Amy Einhorn Books, 336 pages, $24.95), was published in January, and since then it has received glowing reviews from NPR, People, the New York Times and the Boston Globe, and it has impressed the people who matter most—readers—who propelled it onto the New York Times Best Seller list this week. The Weird Sisters tells the story of three Midwestern sisters, Rosalind, Bianca, and Cordelia (better known as Rose, Bean, and Cordy), named after Shakespearean characters by their Shakespeare scholar father. The sisters return home to a quaint university town in the midst of career, romantic, and financial struggles when they learn their mother needs treatment for breast cancer. The family often communicates through quotations from Shakespeare, and much of the book is narrated in the charming collective “we” voice of the sisters. I interviewed Brown via email about the Denver literary scene, her Shakespearean research, and her unique narrative voice. Brown will discuss the origins of her book at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop’s “The Story of a Book” on February 19 at 910 Arts in Denver (910 Santa Fe Blvd., 7 p.m., free), along with Harrison Fletcher, Jackie St. Joan, and me. Next month Brown’s book tour will continue with stops in Washington, California, Colorado, and more.
New West: How long ago did you move to Denver, and what brought you here? Do you have any impressions about the literary scene in Colorado?
Eleanor Brown; [Writer J.C. Hutchins and I] moved to Denver in September of 2010, so just a few months ago. Having lots of friends in the Denver area, we had been visiting for years, and I’d wanted to live here since the first moment I stepped on the soil. The weather, the views, the kind, friendly people—it was just the kind of place I’d dreamed of. Add to that a thriving literary community personified by Lighthouse Writers Workshop and Tattered Cover, and it was a natural fit.
[more]Western Book Roundup
Happy Birthday Neal Cassady, Oregon Book Awards, and The Writers’ Round-Up
Denver Mayor Guillermo Vidal proclaimed Friday “Neal Cassady Day” in honor of the famous Beat muse’s 85th birthday. As William Porter wrote in his informative profile of Cassady for the Denver Post, “Not bad for a kid who grew up in Larimer Street flophouses, did time in jail and bragged about boosting 500 cars by the time he was 20.” The Mercury Café hosted a party to celebrate the birthday of Cassady, the model for the charismatic Dean Moriarty figure in Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. Porter listed the many works of literature that feature Cassady, including Keruoac’s Visions of Cody, Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” and Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Cassady is also the subject of a new documentary, “Neal Cassady: The Denver Years,” by Denver’s Heather Dalton. Anyone who aspires to be a film producer can help Dalton fund the project on Kickstarter.
Also in the Roundup: David Vann at the Tattered Cover, a literary fundraiser for Patagonia Public Library, the Oregon book award finalists were announced, and Craig Lancaster continues his book tour.
[more]New West Book Review
Ruth McLaughlin’s “Bound Like Grass”: A Montana Farm Memoir
Bound Like Grass: A Memoir from the Western High Plains
By Ruth McLaughlin
University of Oklahoma Press, 184 pages,
In her tough and moving memoir Bound Like Grass, Ruth McLaughlin records her family’s history of farming wheat and cattle in Culbertson, Montana, near the North Dakota border. This book serves as an elegy and a monument—without it, there would be no remaining sign of the family’s Montana existence, and few, if anyone, would remember McLaughlin’s two deceased sisters. McLaughlin’s grandparents homesteaded in eastern Montana, her parents continued farming in a mode of spectacular frugality and grim defeat, and McLaughlin and her three siblings grew up there in the ‘50s and ‘60s, only to put as much ground between them and Culbertson as possible.
McLaughlin’s single surviving sibling, Dwight, headed to California the first chance he got, but Ruth, who now lives in Great Falls, was more bound to the land, visiting regularly even after her parents died, until someone bought the property and burned down all the structures, effectively erasing all signs that their family had ever been there. As McLaughlin puts it, “Our family had a ninety-seven-year fling here; now we are gone. Ten have been left behind, including six children, planted in two cemeteries.”
Ruth McLaughlin will read at Chapter One Books in Hamilton, Mont. on March 30.
New West Book Review
“Old Border Road”: An Avant-Garde Take on the Western Novel
Old Border Road
by Susan Froderberg
Little, Brown and Company, 292 pages, $23.99
In her first novel Old Border Road, set amid an epic drought in a small town near the Arizona/Mexico border, Susan Froderberg uses striking, poetic language to convey the parched landscape and internal stagnation of the narrator, seventeen-year-old Katherine. Katherine, who is almost always referred to as Girl, marries a young man named Son. Son turns out to be a chronic womanizer, heading to town to carouse and leaving Girl home with her mother-in-law Rose and her father-in-law, whom she calls Rose’s Daddy, in an old adobe house where the four live together on a ranch. The stripped-down character names are a clue to Froderberg’s aim to tell an elemental story of desiccating weather and thwarted dreams.
[more]Western Book Roundup
“Weird Sisters” Makes a Splash and The Country Bookshelf Changes Hands
The Weird Sisters (Amy Einhorn Books, 318 pp., $24.95), the debut novel by Denver-based writer Eleanor Brown, is earning lots of national praise. USA Today featured it in a recent “New Voices” column, describing the plot in this way: “Three seemingly incompatible sisters, whose father is a Shakespeare scholar, return home to help their mother deal with breast cancer.”
Barnes & Noble picked it for their Discover Great New Writers Program, Amazon.com featured it in their “Best of the Month” list, Cathy Langer, head buyer for Denver’s Tattered Cover, talked it up, Entertainment Weekly and People Magazine praised it, and Janet Maslin wrote for the New York Times, “Eleanor Brown’s debut novel begins charmingly, narrated by three sisters who speak as a single entity.” And The Weird Sisters has just been out for a week.
Also in the Roundup: Cortright McMeel picks his favorite Western novels, Bozeman’s Country Bookshelf has a new owner, and Annie Proulx promotes Bird Cloud in Dallas.
[more]New West Book Review
Famous Indian Artists Charm in Eddie Chuculate’s “Cheyenne Madonna”
In one story in Cheyenne Madonna, Eddie Chuculate’s wry and winning debut collection, Jordan Coolwater, the Creek/Cherokee protagonist of the book, sits with his girlfriend in Santa Fe’s plaza, selling handmade jewelry. “Tourists from New Zealand, Australia, or the U.K. would make the most braindead comments,” he explains, “wondering aloud where they ‘might find all the buffalo and teepees,’ or ‘Where does the Trail of Tears start?” Such is the life of an Indian artist, which Chuculate depicts with wit, candor, and warmth. Jordan comes from a family that includes several artists, and one day this will also be his career, in between alcoholic benders and a stint in jail.
The book begins with the O. Henry Prize winning story “Galveston Bay, 1826,” which functions as a sort of prologue to the six Jordan Coolwater stories that follow. A band of four Cheyenne men make their way south on horseback to Galveston Bay to visit the ocean for the first time. “This wasn’t a war party or a scouting trip,” Chuculate writes, “This was plain-and-simple joyriding.” As they approach the ocean, they befriend the local Indians by offering their chief a horse. They enjoy seafood and taste the ocean’s salty water, but soon decide to ditch the remainder of their new friends’ all-night dance party and return home.
