Western Book Roundup

This year’s Montana Book Award winner is Ruth McLaughlin’s moving memoir, Bound Like Grass: A Memoir from the Western High Plains (University of Oklahoma Press). The prize committee praised it for its “acute observation,” honesty, and beautiful writing. The committee also named four honor books published in 2010:

Everything by Kevin Canty (Nan A. Talese)

Goodbye Wifes and Daughters by Susan Resnick (University of Nebraska Press)

The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking)

Visions of the Big Sky: Painting and Photographing the Northern Rocky Mountains by Dan Flores (University of Oklahoma Press)

The winners will be honored at the Montana Library Association conference in Billings on April 7. McLaughlin will do a victory lap at several bookstores in Montana: in Bozeman at the Country Bookshelf on March 29, in Hamilton at Chapter One Bookstore on March 30, and in Missoula at Fact and Fiction on March 31. All readings are at 7 p.m.

Also in the Roundup: Boise’s Alan Heathcock launches Volt, Benjamin Percy reads in Denver, and three Western bookstores are in the running for the Bookstore of the Year Award.

A New Take On Old West Lit

Out of the five most significant works about mountain men, Hollywood managed to turn four into disappointing movies. Those four (according to a 1999 Western Literature Association survey and surveys by The San Francisco Chronicle, Hungry Mind Review and Heath American Literature Newsletter) are The Big Sky by A.B. Guthrie Jr.; Lord Grizzly by Frederick Manfred; Mountain Man by Vardis Fisher; and Wolf Song by Harvey Ferguson.

Song of Three Friends by John G. Neihardt is the fifth work. It is a poem rather than a novel, which might explain why Hollywood hasn’t mangled it into a film version.

One problem in writing “regional” books, as all western writers know, is that readers expect authenticity. Where a character in a Hemingway novel can “pull a heavy, ugly revolver from his pocket,” in a western novel he’s expected to draw a “Colt Single-Action Army with 7’ barrel.” Graham Greene’s readers don’t care if he calls a horse a “mount,” but in a western it had better be a Barb, Arab cross, buckskin gelding or a well-muscled roan showing mustang blood.

Western Writers

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.

Western Book Roundup

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.

New West Feature

Owners of secondhand bookshops, used CD stores and antique shops in Utah say a board of pawn shop owners and law enforcement officials has been trying to use the state legislature to drive them out of business, and they’re sick of it.

“They want to make it so that any dealer of secondhand goods would have to obey the same draconian laws as pawn shops,” says Ken Sanders, owner of Ken Sander’s Rare Books, a prominent used bookstore in downtown Salt Lake City. “That would put me and a lot of other people out of business.”

Western Book Roundup

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.

Western Book Roundup

Steven Rinella, author of American Buffalo, one of my favorite books from a few years ago, is the host of a new show on The Travel Channel, ”The Wild Within.” My television is not equipped with those fancy channels that you pay for, but there are several amusing trailers for the show available for cheapskates to view on the Travel Channel’s website.  In one, Rinella is out hunting with his brother, who discusses his idea to turn some elk ivories (the molars of an elk) into an engagement ring for his girlfriend.  In another, Rinella takes a boat he made out of a buffalo hide out in the Missouri River in Montana, and capsizes.

The show features Rinella hunting, chatting with hunting buddies, and expounding on his philosophy of only eating the meat of animals that he has killed himself.  You can also catch various Rinella tidbits on his Twitter feed.

Western Writers

David E. Hilton‘s debut novel Kings of Colorado (Simon & Schuster, $24) begins, “In the summer of 1963, when I was thirteen, I stabbed my father in the chest with a Davy Crockett Explorers pocketknife.” The narrator, the sensitive William Sheppard, attacked his father because he was beating his mother, and is sentenced to two years at the Swope Ranch Boys Reformatory in Colorado.  Will bands together with three other boys to try to endure the cruelties and violence of life at the reformatory, where one solace is the opportunity to help break mustangs.  Hilton lives near Austin with his family.  I interviewed him via email about the swayback horse named Bullet he briefly owned as a child, why he had to write part of this novel in the bathroom, and whether his experience as a middle school teacher inspired the violence in Kings of Colorado.  Hilton will discuss his book at BookPeople in Austin on January 13 (7 p.m.)

New West: How did the idea for Kings of Colorado come to you?  Did you begin with the plot or the characters?

David E. Hilton: Oddly enough, the characters did begin to crawl into my mind ahead of the plot, especially the one who became Benny Fritch.  I initially decided to break him up into two separate characters, but later realized it would be far more interesting to combine those traits into one person.  I set out to create a story that, at the core, was about friends finding each other while in a dark, controlled environment, a place where hope was hard to come by.  I’ve always been a sucker for prison stories, but in this instance, I had to incorporate that lost innocence of youth.  What blossomed was the juvenile reformatory ranch.

Western Book Roundup

Happy New Year, everyone.  Now back to work, right?  I’ve got a backlog of Western book news to share today, so here we go:

• A few weeks ago, the New York Times discussed the Montana writer Annick Smith’s efforts to block “Imperial Oil, a Canadian subsidiary of ExxonMobil” from moving “its oversize oil-processing equipment from a port in Idaho to Canada, along a path that includes some of the nation’s most scenic highways.” Other writers are joining the fight—David James Duncan and Rick Bass have written a book, The Heart of the Monster, and the proceeds will go to a group called All Against the Haul.  (Steve Bunk summarized the court battle over megaloads on Highway 12 recently for New West.) My new favorite website, Northwest Book Lovers, recently caught up with Bass and Duncan to discuss the project. Check out All Against the Haul’s Twitter feed for more information.

Also in the Roundup: Western writers in Poets & Writers magazine, the Brokeback Mountain screenwriters are at work on new westerns, a fundraiser for Charles Bock, and Pitchapalooza at the Tattered Cover.

Western Writers

Denver’s Cortright McMeel works for Rainbow Energy, teaches at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop, founded Murdaland, a crime fiction literary magazine, and writes accomplished short stories and novels.  His thirteen years of experience as an energy trader provided the source material for Short (Thomas Dunne Books, 304 pages, $24.99), a talented and funny debut novel of duplicitous and morally bankrupt traders and brokers.  In Jess Walter’s review of Short for The Washington Post, he noted that McMeel “revels in juicy descriptions and office anecdotes, which have the unmistakable feel of insider lore.” I recently interviewed McMeel via email about Short.  We discussed why he originally thought of his novel as a “trader Western,” another novel he’s working on about Doc Holliday, and his trademark “Dad who has two kids under six writing technique.” Cortright McMeel will discuss Short at the Tattered Cover (Colfax) on Wednesday, January 5 at 7:30 p.m.

New West: What brought you to Denver?

Cortright McMeel: My wife has always wanted to live here near the mountains so we could ski more. I got a look at an energy trading firm out here three years ago and we took the shot. It’s been excellent, especially for the kids, and we’ve never looked back.

NW: Your first novel, Short is set mainly on the east coast—have you set anything you’ve written in Colorado?

CM: As soon as I arrived, I found out that Doc Holliday died in Glenwood Springs. I took a trip to visit his grave. Ever since I have been doing research on a novel about his final stint in Leadville. One chapter is written, and the project is one that is very personal to me and one that I am excited about.