New West Book Review

Twisted Tree
by Kent Meyers
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 289 pages, $24

Kent Meyers’ haunting new novel, Twisted Tree, opens with an invented quote from a police officer speaking in a 2003 article in the fictional Spokane Plain Dealer, entitled “Is There an I-90 Killer?”: “We believe it’s the same man.  Both victims were female, extremely thin.” On the next page Meyers begins his complicated narrative with the first-person voice of a serial killer, a man who targets anorexic women along I-90, kidnaps, rapes, and kills them, and breaks their bones, although as one character chillingly observes, nobody knows in exactly what order he carries out those vile acts.  He researches his victims on pro-anorexia sites on the Internet, and as Twisted Tree opens, he discovers his target, Hayley Jo Zimmerman, or HayJay, at the store where he knows she works in the Rushmore Mall in Rapid City, South Dakota, and entices her into leaving with him.

Meyers brings the chapter to the moment where Hayley Jo realizes what her fate will be, then he leaves her, plunging the reader into the thoughts of the supermarket checkout clerk in Hayley Jo’s hometown of Twisted Tree, South Dakota.  The clerk, Elise Thompson, spent some time as a missionary in South America, and vaguely knew Hayley Jo, as did everyone in this small town.  The book carries on like this, jumping from one character’s first-person narrative or third-person perspective to the next, moving back and forth in time, offering up many sharp, moving passages, such as the story of a poor Native American boy’s brief triumph as an elementary school marble champion.  In this way Meyers fashions a portrait of the town, filled with the large and small tragedies, the frustrated hopes and the minor triumphs of its people.  Meyers brilliantly displays the abuse, the secret loves, and private dreams that form the hidden motivations of this community.

New West Book Review

Wisdom of the Last Farmer
by David Mas Masumoto
Simon & Schuster, 238 pages, $25

David Mas Masumoto‘s Wisdom of the Last Farmer will make you want to go out and pay a farmer more than the asking price for his produce at a market.  Masumoto grows organic peaches, nectarines, and grapes on his farm in California’s central valley, carrying on in the tradition of his family.  His grandparents emigrated from Japan over a hundred years ago with the dream of buying land.  Because they weren’t native born Americans, laws forbade them from purchasing land, so instead they worked in other people’s fields and suffered through internment in the Arizona desert during World War II.  But they persevered and eventually their sons established the 80-acre farm that Masumoto now runs with his wife and children. 

Masumoto is on a mission to preserve flavorful heirloom peaches that his family has grown for decades, varieties most farmers have abandoned because of supermarkets’ demands for harder, redder peaches with longer shelf life and transport durability.  Masumoto wants people to experience the “Sun Crest peach, a fat and juicy gem with a stunning, honeyed flavor.” If people could try it, he thinks, they probably wouldn’t settle for the fruit that’s sold as peaches today.

In Wisdom of the Last Farmer, Masumoto, a columnist for the Fresno Bee and the award-winning author of several previous books, discusses his father’s decline in the wake of a stroke, and how their hard work in pursuit of a perfect peach breaks their bodies and spirits down.  “Organic farming is not simple or easy,” Masumoto writes.  “It’s easy to want to be environmentally responsible, but it’s a damned hard thing to achieve.  I cannot replace tedious labor with faster technology or equipment when things go wrong.”

David Mas Masumoto will be in Utah to present his book in Salt Lake City at the King’s English Bookshop on Thursday, October 22 (5:30 p.m.).  On October 23 and 24, he will participate in the Moab Confluence “Eating the West” literary festival, and on October 25 he will visit Denver’s Tattered Cover (Colfax, 2 p.m.) as a part of the Rocky Mountain Land Library reading series.

Western Book Roundup

This year’s Montana Festival of the Book, which begins Thursday, has an incredible lineup scheduled.  The October 23 reading with humorist David Sedaris is sold out, but there’s so much else going on that nobody who missed out on tickets for that event should go home with an empty brain. 

On Thursday, October 22, four renowned crime novelists will participate in the panel discussion ”The Last Good Kiss: An Appreciation of James Crumley.” Michael Koepf will interview Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Laura Lippman and James Grady about “the work of Montana mystery writer James Crumley and its impact on the mystery genre and literature as a whole” (Wilma Theatre, 3 p.m.).

Many writers of some of the great books I’ve reviewed here over the past few years will offer readings, including Maile Meloy (with Dennis Lehane and Andrew Sean Greer on Thursday, October 22, Wilma Theater, 7:30 p.m.), Marianne Wiggins and Kevin Canty (with James Lee Burke, October 24, Wilma Theater, 7:30 p.m.), and Rick Bass (October 24, Holiday Inn, 11 a.m.). 

Bass and Wiggins will participate on a panel discussion called “Locating the Novel” that sounds fascinating, described in The Missoulian in this way: “Some novels are ‘high concept.’ Some authors start out with a setting, a room, a landscape. And sometimes the story begins with the sound of a voice, a character. How does the ‘initiating impulse’ affect the final product? And do some authors only hear voices while others always see visions?” (October 23, with Andrew Sean Greer, and Peter Orner, Holiday Inn, 2:30 p.m.)

The one presentation that makes me wish teleportation existed so that I could just zap myself up to Missoula is “‘The Wire,’ An Interview,” with the show’s creator David Simon, and George Pelecanos, one of the show’s co-producers and writers (Holiday Inn, October 24, 1 p.m.).

Also in the Roundup: A call for submissions to an anthology about living and working in the National Parks, Sun Valley’s Hemingway festival, a Boise man wins Esquire’s fiction contest, Denver novelist Carleen Brice shares her home with the Denver Post, and David Wroblewski kicks off his paperback tour.

New West Book Review

Impossible Motherhood: Testimony of an Abortion Addict
by Irene Vilar
Other Press
222 pages, $15.95

Irene Vilar was born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico.  Her first memoir, The Ladies’ Gallery, was a Philadelphia Inquirer and Detroit Free Press notable book of the year and was short-listed for the 1999 Mind Book of the Year Award.  She is a literary agent and series editor of The Americas at Texas Tech University Press, and lives in Colorado with her husband and two daughters.  Despite all these achievements, Irene Vilar also had fifteen abortions in sixteen years and tried to commit suicide seven times.  And no, her latest book, Impossible Motherhood, is not fiction.

Looking at the cover it’s easy to assume Impossible Motherhood is a sensationalist book.  The “abortion addict” subtitle sounds like a strange marketing ploy, but Vilar shows that she was an abortion addict, similar to how her brothers were heroin addicts and her father an alcoholic womanizer.  During her second abortion/suicide attempt, she almost bled to death.  One of her last abortions was an illegal one in Puerto Rico inside a warehouse-like room.  Vilar was at risk for cervical cancer and still had fecal matter from one of her pregnancies lodged inside her body. 

But Impossible Motherhood isn’t really about her abortions.  It’s about a destructive family legacy, self-mutilation, and, eventually, survival.  Surprisingly, it reads easily and is a gripping book.  Throughout I kept forgetting how many abortions Vilar had and kept hoping she would stop and save herself.  In lesser hands this could have been an overwrought book, but Vilar doesn’t sensationalize, or make excuses.  Most readers will be able to relate to the universal themes of trauma, depression, grief, loss and self-destruction.

Irene Vilar will discuss her book at the Boulder Book Store on Monday, October 19 at 7:30 p.m.

Denver Literary Event

Lighthouse Writers Workshop is an independent creative writing program that has sponsored writing classes and literary events in Denver since 1997.  Many accomplished Colorado writers teach at Lighthouse, including novelists Nick Arvin, Eli Gottlieb, and Laura Pritchett, and several writers who have taken classes at Lighthouse can boast of significant achievements as well, notably Gary Schanbacher, whose story collection Migration Patterns was a finalist for last year’s Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, and David Wroblewski, whose debut novel, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, was a critically-acclaimed national bestseller and Oprah’s Book Club pick.  For the past seven years, Lighthouse has hosted the weekend-long ”Inside the Writers Studio,” bringing one outstanding writer to Denver to read and discuss his or her writing process.  Past participants include Tobias Wolff and Francine Prose, and this year the Writers Studio will feature Lorrie Moore, whose smart, witty fiction has earned her ardent fans and many honors, including the Rea Award for the Short Story and the O. Henry Award.

Moore will participate in an on-stage interview with Eli Gottlieb at the L2 Arts & Culture Events Center in Denver on Saturday, October 24 (4 p.m., $10-$15) followed by drinks and appetizers (6 p.m., $55-$70). On October 25, Moore will present “A Non-Crafty Look at Craft: Breaking Into the Writer’s Craft” at the Tattered Cover (LoDo, 10 a.m.-12 p.m., $50-$65).

This fall Lorrie Moore followed up her best-selling story collection, 1998’s Birds of America, with her first novel in fifteen years, A Gate at the Stairs.  Set in the fictional Midwestern college town of Troy, A Gate at the Stairs follows farm-raised 20-year-old narrator Tassie Keltjin as she navigates college, a babysitting job for an unusual couple who adopt a biracial toddler, and a new, mysterious boyfriend.  Moore recently responded to some questions via email.

Western Book Roundup

Last night I read Danica Novgorodoff‘s graphic novel version of Benjamin Percy‘s prize-winning short story ”Refresh, Refresh” (First Second, 138 pages, $17.99)—it took a while before I could peel myself off of the couch after finishing it.  As the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continue, Percy’s story about what happens to the soldiers’ families left behind remains powerful and topical.  Percy grew up in Bend, Oregon, and much of his fiction takes place there.  Novgorodoff’s illustrations capture a small Oregon town set against the wilderness, where joining the military is one of the only viable employment options.

Novgorodoff based her graphic novel on the screenplay by James Ponsoldt, which extends the original story.  The graphic novel uses some of Percy’s original language from the story, which first appeared in The Paris Review in 2005 (and won that magazine’s annual prize for best story, as well as a slot in the Best American Short Stories), and was the title story of Percy’s 2007 short story collection published by Graywolf Press. 

Also in the Roundup: Moab Confluence literary festival and Billings’ High Plains Book Awards.

New West Book Review

Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel
by Jeannette Walls
Scribner, 288 pages, $25

In her author’s note, Jeannette Walls explains how she came to write this novel about her singular grandmother: “This book was originally meant to be about my mother’s childhood growing up on a cattle ranch in Arizona.  But as I talked to Mom about those years, she kept insisting that her mother was the one who had led the truly interesting life and that the book should be about Lily.” Walls’ mom was right: Lily Casey Smith is a one-of-a-kind horse-breaking, whiskey-drinking, poker-playing, moonshine-selling, ranch-running, airplane-flying, pistol-packing, school-teaching, indomitable pioneer. 

The Phoenix-born Walls previously wrote a bestselling memoir, 2005’s The Glass Castle, about her unconventional childhood.  Although Half Broke Horses records the actual events of Lily Casey Smith’s life, Walls writes it in the first-person and creates vivid scenes that she wasn’t present for, so as she puts it, “the only honest thing to do is call the book a novel.” Whatever you call it, it’s a fascinating book, packed with harrowing situations, colorful characters, and beautiful description of the southwest landscape that Lily knew intimately from her years ranching it.

Western Writers

One Friday last April at a Denver restaurant, the attention of every woman at the table was riveted to Sara Megibow, a literary agent four months into a surrogate pregnancy.  She told of how she agreed to do it for close friends, a breast cancer survivor and her husband.  Her story resonated not because anyone present was in the market for a good surrogate.  But most there were always in the market for a good story.  At least two of the women weighed Megibow’s experience as potential material to write about.  One said it might make a good article for a woman’s magazine.  Another thought it might fit into one of her series of inspirational books.  This was a table of women with ink in their blood.

Its web site describes Literary Ladies Luncheon as “A loose association of women writers. Or an association of loose women writers...and editors and literary agents.” The group—started by writer and publicity consultant Bella Stander— meets monthly at a designated Denver-area eatery, and often about a dozen attend for chow and chat, but twice that many may dined together at more prolific times.  The emailed invitees number up to 45; some show up for every lunch, others appear most of the time, and a few drop in occasionally.

Stander and a small circle of friends started the lunches in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1996.  “I was bored and lonely,” she says.  “As a writer you sit home and work alone, so it’s good to get to know other writers.” Stander founded a Colorado branch less than a year after she moved to the state in 2005.  The southern chapter still flourishes.  “We want to take over the world,” she says.

Western Book Roundup

I have a lot of good news to report this week about regional writers:

• Last week Pen Center USA announced that Moscow, Idaho’s Kim Barnes has won their award for Fiction for her novel A Country Called Home. (A complete list of winners is here.) Conveniently for those who may have missed this absorbing, lyrical novel, the paperback edition just hit bookstores last week.  Last year I spoke to Barnes about her inspiration for the book and her difficulty with the term “regionalist,” among other topics.

Pen USA will also honor Elmore Leonard with a lifetime achievement award.  According to the organization’s website, “In a career spanning 60 years, Leonard has published 43 novels and numerous short stories, creating a distinct literary style that has delighted readers and influenced a new generation of writers.”

• The winners of the Willa Awards for “for outstanding literature featuring women’s stories set in the West” were announced recently in Los Angeles.  Jana Richman won in the contemporary fiction category for her novel The Last Cowgirl.  (A complete list of winners is here.) I spoke with Richman last year about the Utah environmental issues that fuel her fiction.

• Harper Perennial will publish Denver writer and engineer Nick Arvin‘s new novel, The Reconstructionist, in the fall of 2010.  According to Publisher’s Marketplace, the book follows “a forensic investigator who specializes in car crash sites, and who enters a haunted affair with the wife of his mentor in the profession,” and the sale was “a six-figure deal.” Fox has purchased the rights to make the story into a TV series.  I spoke with Arvin in 2007 about his first novel, Articles of War, which was a One Book, One Denver selection.

Also in the Roundup: Casper College Lit Fest, a Hemingway celebration in Idaho, Tom Miller’s brush with Hemingway’s Nobel Prize Medallion, Kevin Canty reads in Missoula, a new Poet Laureate for Montana, a new children’s book review blog, and Maria’s Bookshop in Durango celebrates its 25th.

New West Book Review

The Financial Lives of the Poets
by Jess Walter
Harper, 290 pages, $25.99

In his hilarious and timely new novel, Spokane’s Jess Walter explores the maxim that there’s nothing more dangerous than an unemployed man, even though the primary person in danger may be the man himself, as is the case with protagonist Matt Prior.  Several years before The Financial Lives of the Poets begins, Matt was a business reporter for a daily newspaper and he decided to pursue his ill-conceived dream: starting a website that reports business news in poetry form.  When Poetfolio.com tanked before it was even launched, something that everyone but Matt could see coming, Matt scurried back to his newspaper job.  But because he’d left, he lost his seniority at the paper, and was one of the first to be laid off when the paper downsized.

Matt couldn’t afford to lose his job: he’s got an enormous mortgage on a big house, a car payment, a garage full of supposedly collectible crap that his wife purchased in a compulsive shopping binge on eBay, and two non-Catholic young sons who attend Catholic school because the neighborhood public school reminds Matt of Sing-Sing.  One evening when Matt has just received a letter from the mortgage company threatening foreclosure in a week, he is becoming increasingly suspicious of his wife’s Facebook conversations with her old high school boyfriend, and his unemployment benefits are about to run out, Matt heads to a 7-Eleven to buy some milk.  “Two tattooed white kids in silk sweat suits step to the line behind me and I tense a little, double-pat my wallet,” Walter writes.  As Matt walks outside, one of the guys offers him “a hit on a glass blunt.”

Jess Walter will discuss The Financial Lives of the Poets at Powells Books in Portland, Ore. on October 29, in Missoula at Fact and Fiction on November 5, and at the University Bookstore in Moscow, Idaho on December 3.